Kim Possible Rides Again
by hotrod2001
Summary: College Spring Break turns ugly as Kim Possible and her boyfriend Ron Stoppable come out of retirement to help stop a new threat bent on global annihilation.
1. Chapter 1

_Dedicated to RownBWL whose postings of Kim Possible episodes on Youtube years ago started this whole thing._

 _Special thanks to Taechunsa for his help and advise as my beta for this story._

And most importantly, thanks to all of my fans who have patiently awaited this story to be told for the last several years.  
I hope it lives up to its billing!  
~HR

 **Chapter 1**

* March 2010 *

"Just look at that, Shego, 'TEAM GO REUNITING!' Front page, above the fold!" Drakken exclaimed with pride as he showed his partner the latest edition of the Go City Gazette. "It is so nice that your family has offered to bring you back into the family business during our time of change. And on top of it all, we're national news!"

"Time of change?" Shego asked with an eyeroll. "I still can't believe that I agreed to join my brothers in their campy super club again as part of the pardon agreement."

"Oh, don't think of it in those terms, think of it as a new beginning! Though, I admit that it's a little bittersweet having to sell and move out of the old layer, but I mean, we're _heroes_ now. A dark and drab fortress of a reformed evil genius doesn't really portray that image very well."

"Big whoop. Extra oop," Shego droled. "We helped save the world THREE YEARS AGO. Ever since then 'those people' have been debating whether or not to erect statues of us or throw us in jail."

"No jail time here my dear," he assured digging through the front of his coat. "Remember they gave me a medal! See?"

"Yeah, yeah, and you haven't taken it off since they gave it to you."

"I wear it as a testament to the changes I have made in my life; a constant reminder to keep on the straight and narrow and to leave my evil ways behind. Straight and narrow, Shego, from here on out!" he shouted, dropping the boxes he was holding and proceeding to point his finger high in the air.

"Straight and narrow, straight and narrow. You say that EVERY day, Drew. Sometimes I think that whatever that medal is made out of is being absorbed into your skin and affecting your thinking ability."

"If it is than it's quite beneficial!" he boasted. "I haven't felt this confident since college."

"Good for you," Shego groaned picking up the boxes.

"Oh, by the way, I talked to Hego earlier today and he said that I can have a space in the basement and be Team Go's 'Q'."

"Oh, great, that's just what they need, new gadgets with an 80% failure rate. The four of them have trouble flying the GoJet as it is without you factored into the equation," she mocked while digging through an old box and pulling out her old Team Go mask and dusting it off.

"Shego, I am not caring for this negative attitude you are pulling. This is an opportunity to finally change our ways once and for all, and you are acting like it's a bad thing."

"Well, it's not like it's _your_ brothers that they're demanding we go shack up with, Drew. Did it ever cross your mind that there were reasons why I left the team in the first place?" she shot back as she bent over and pulled the hood over her head. "Hego, for example, is what we called in crime fighting circles as 'Lawful Stupid', then you have Mego who is a self-absorbed prick who cares only about himself, and the Wegos … well let's just say that for all of the angst I have ever had for Kim Possible, I …" Shego paused and sighed. "I _might_ have just a … teeny … weeny … bit of sympathy for her because Princess has a pair of younger twin brothers who annoy her to no  
end too."

"Lawful Stupid?" Drakken asked in reference to Shego's oldest sibling.

"Yeah, the moron is so obsessed with always upholding the law at any cost that he doesn't always do the right thing," she remarked while pulling her long black hair out of the hood. "For instance, there was this time we were going after this villain named Phil Harmonic, expert in wave frequencies, had a thing for orchestra music, play on words, yada yada. Anyways, we were trying to stop him from using this earthquake gun on the city but he outsmarted us and we ended up falling into a trap."

"A trap?"

"Yeah, Mego did something stupid and triggered it. Anyways, we were all tied up, flanked by Harmonic's two side kicks, dead to rights when another villain by the name of Dana Gerous dropped in out of nowhere and saved us."

"Another villain?"

"Yeah, Harmonic apparently had double-crossed her earlier in the week and she was looking for revenge. Anyways, to make a long story short, she freed us and together we took down Harmonic and his goons and saved the city. Again," Shego said in a mocking voice. "So, what does the Lawful Stupid dumbass do? Instead of thanking her for saving our skin and making her a much-needed ally, he has her arrested and jailed along with Harmonic's crew because 'she was one of the bad guys'," she finished in a mocking impersonation of Hego.

"What happened after that?"

"That was final straw. I quit the team that night and broke Dana out of jail. The two of us ran off to Lowerton where we had a pretty nice partnership going on until she quit the life."

"Quit?"

"Yeah, found love. She actually ended up marrying one of Harmonic's sidekicks of all things.  
I never heard from her after that so I ventured out on my own until that fateful night at the Bermuda Triangle when I ran into you."

"I never knew that," he admitted while picking back up the boxes. "So, are we going to be able to coexist with your brothers or are we getting ourselves into a ticking timebomb?"

"Well, according to that lovely accord we agreed to we're going to have to make it work. That is unless you want to spend the next thirty years of your life with Frugal Lucre as a bunkmate," she said finally pulling her old hood up her neck and over her face.

Striking an overly cliche action pose, Shego asked her former partner in crime, "How do I look?"

"Like a hero my love," he said enthusiastically while grabbing her hand. "Like a hero!"

"Awh, that's so sweet, even if what you're saying is really stupid. Now help me load the rest of these boxes into the hovercraft, we're expected to be in Go City in three hours."

"Straight and narrow, dear! Don't forget it!"

"How could I?"

*** KIM POSSIBLE RIDES AGAIN ***

"A beautiful Friday afternoon with nine days of vacation looming and you're reading some stupid old law book?" Bonnie scoffed as she leaned against the table Kim was sitting at. "God, you're lame."

"Lame?" the former teen hero and current college junior asked her suitemate and current source of a headache. "No, Bonnie, what is lame is categorizing Grotius' work as some 'stupid old law book'. Besides, this will give me a leg up on that Intro to Public Law course I will be taking next term," Kim said looking up through her glasses at her old rival.

"Sorry, Kim, but reading Grossious, whoever that is, is not only lame, but it's also boring."

"Well, not everyone is taking such challenging classes as Disney Film Appreciation and Aerobics like _your highness_."

"Hey! A degree in cinema appreciation is hard work, and unlike some people I actually care about looking good."

Kim conveniently ignored Bonnie's second comment, since she hadn't been working out much lately. "Yeah. I am sure it was excruciating writing that ten-page report on how Prince Eric from 'The Little Mermaid' was the epitome of male sex appeal in modern cinema."

Bonnie just grumbled a bit about stupid professors not appreciating the important aspects of cinema.

Kim smirked a little and tallied a mark under her name on the mental scoreboard she kept in her head.

"Regardless, all you ever do is study, study, study. I mean you don't even go off and save the world anymore. It's all law this or cultural that," the brown-haired girl said disdainfully. "My gosh, have you even been out to a party this year?" she asked while pulling open her vest and exposing the Greek lettering emblazoned across her chest before joining Kim at the table.

"Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie," Kim breezily said while flipping her ponytail off her shoulder. It's good form for the daughter of a rocket scientist and a neurosurgeon to keep up the tradition of being a well-educated, contributing member of society. As for my globetrotting, we've been over this before on how I decided that there were different and better ways to save the world than going on spy missions and crime fighting years ago. And as for partying, I went to that party with Ron just two weeks ago."

"K, that was not a party. That was a lame-o convention of your loser boyfriend and his fellow loser Upperton U culinary program nerds. 'Hors devours of the World'? What a joke. They couldn't even do something classy like a cheese and wine tasting."

Kim just rolled her eyes. "Well, seeing that the majority of people there were under twenty-one they couldn't actually do a wine tasting per something called 'The Law'. Either way it was a great party. Furthermore, I am so through with _your_ type of partying. I had enough of 'Animal House' over the last two years to last me three lifetimes.

"Yeah, yeah, so basically what you're saying is that you're a legacy child who happens to be a has-been _and_ a lightweight."

Kim winced a little at that and put a tally mark under Bonnie's name on the mental scoreboard.

"I, on the other hand, am going to be taking my spring break nice and easy and take in whatever comes down in Denver. And the only time I'll be 'getting a leg up' is if I can finally hook up with that super cute roommate of Jessica's boyfriend. Mmmmmmm."

"I really didn't need that visualization."

"Oh, but you really do K," Bonnie insisted leaning in. "He's a former Marine, plays the guitar like a god and those abs. He's no Junior but you could wash your clothes on them."

"Uh huh, and remind me again why you and Senor Senior, Junior broke up?"

"Oh, give it a break, Kim. It was just irreconcilable differences, that's all."

"Riiight. Like you couldn't reconcile yourself with the fact that Junior's wealth disappeared along with his father's when the market collapsed?"

"What do you take me for Possible? A gold digger?"

"Oh, no! I would _never_ categorize you as a shallow, materialistic person," Kim answered with sarcasm dripping from each word. "OH WAIT, now I remember what the irreconcilable differences were. He dumped you because he couldn't reconcile the fact that you cheated on him."

"Okay, that was _partially_ to blame. But in my defense he was never around," Bonnie said after looking down in shame and sighing.

"Because, he was working three jobs to make ends meet."

"I had needs K, and in a moment of weakness I lapsed."

"With the _entire_ soccer team?!"

Bonnie closed her eyes for a second before haughtily looking back at her suitemate. "I don't see where you can judge me. If I recall, you and Ron had your share of rough times too."

Kim's eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Time out," Kim said while making a T with her hands. "Our breakup was … complicated. We just both had some growing up to do, and the distance didn't help. It … well, our … my priorities were different then. They were … off," Kim finished weakly. Eyes blazing back to life, Kim continued, "But I want to get one thing straight. I may have done a lot of stupid things but I never cheated on Ron. Never!"

Bonnie simply held her hands up in surrender. "Fair enough. Little Miss flash-the-world and make-out-with-anything-on-two-legs didn't show up until after you dumped him," Bonnie added.

It was Kim's turn to sigh and close her eyes for second. She tallied a point under each of their names on her mental scoreboard for that exchange, as she was reminded of how far she had fallen in those two years without Ron. "That's all in my past, Bonnie. I apologized, Ron forgave me and we've been happily together ever since. So, my days of joining the college party scene are done," Kim said before taking another sip of coffee.

"Yeah, I recall how you 'apologized' on our couch last Labor Day. Well, maybe _on_ isn't totally accurate. I mean not all of you was on the couch."

Kim blushed. Thank goodness Drakken was good now, because if there had been even a hint of aurora orchid spray within a mile of her she would have immediately disappeared that evening. "You're never going to let me live that down are you?"

"Why would I when I just love how flushed and awkward you get whenever it gets brought up?" Bonnie asked with a wink. "Personally, I think it's a waste. Of all the people that you could be doing that with you chose Ron? Although, from what I saw that night ..."

"Enough!" Kim practically screamed with wide eyes and put another tally under Bonnie's name.

Bonnie just smirked. "Personally, I'd rather be thrown off a cliff."

"That could be arranged," Kim mumbled as she pretended to go back to reading her book.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh nothing, Bon Bon, just thinking out loud."

"Speaking of things best left unseen, isn't lover boy supposed to be coming down from Middleton for a few days?" Bonnie asked with narrowed eyes.

Kim gasped. "Oh no! What time is it?"

"Half past not caring," Bonnie remarked while admiring her manicured nails.

Kim growled and cursed herself for getting so caught up in competing with Bonnie. "You really are useless you know that," Kim said as she frantically dug in her backpack for her cell phone. "Shoot! It's 2:17! I've got to meet him at the bus stop in fifteen minutes."

"The bus stop? That's right, I keep forgetting that the doofus never got a car."

"He's never needed one."

"Yeah, well, that bus stop is all the way on the other side of campus. So if you want to meet your Prince Charming as he makes his grand entrance on the short bus you better get a move on."

"Thanks for the help," Kim grunted as she shoved her book into her backpack, chugged the final bit of her coffee and hopped up from the table. "Gotta go."

"Ta ta." Bonnie waved with a sheepish, non-caring grin.

While Kim and Bonnie were having their conversation at the Student Union, a different conversation was taking place on the Eugene-bound Dachshund Line bus.

"I still think you're making a big mistake," Felix moaned over the videocall.

"KP deserves the best."

"I'm not questioning that, Ron. But, biggest isn't always best. I mean, come on, that thing is a monstrosity."

"Felix, Felix, Felix. It isn't a monstrosity. It is a physical symbol of how much I love Kim," Ron said holding up a small black velvet box containing an engagement ring topped with an exceptionally large diamond solitaire.

"Ron, Kim isn't as shallow as to believe that the bigger the rock the bigger the love. She isn't Bonnie," Felix moaned. "Besides, Kim's never been big on jewelry and I don't think she would be caught dead with something that big."

"Felix, my friend, KP's never been into big jewelry because she's never _had_ a reason to wear it. But when she says 'yes' to this that'll all change."

"Yeah … but … really Ron? This is overkill. One carat you might be able to get away with. But _five carats_? That's not an engagement ring, that's a mortgage on a finger!"

Ron was silent for a second before responding to his friend. "Felix, the two of us have been through a lot. Kim's been through a lot. I just want her to know how special she is to me. I want something that leaves her speechless every time she looks at it."

"Well, she would definitely be speechless," Felix said with a sigh. "Whether or not that is a good thing I'm not sure. Honestly, Ron, as long as you didn't get her something that would rival a diamond you'd find on the end of a drill bit she's going to know how special she is to you every time she looks at it."

"Yeah, it's the thought that counts' and all that, but if I have the money what else am I going to do with it? Kim had a good point, a lot of money isn't going to make me happy. So, what better way to spend my money than on her?"

"Yeah well, I'm not exactly hurting for money either, but Zeta would _still_ kill me if I spent that much on her ring. Ron, you could buy a small house for what you spent on that ring."

Ron blew a raspberry. "Not even close. I've been looking at houses in the Eugene area and they cost way more than this ring. Hey, we're pulling into the bus stop so I gotta go. Catch you later Felix!"

"Ron, I'm seri-" Felix was cut off as Ron closed the laptop, put the ring back into his pants pocket and began to collect his carry-ons.

"What?" Ron asked a scowling Rufus slouched over in the seat beside him.

*Too big,* the rodent chirped.

"Not you too. Rufus it's for KP. KP!"

*Clueless,* Rufus squeaked before facepalming.

Kim sprinted across campus as fast as her feet would take her. She weaved in and out of students coming out of class and jumped over one on the ground strumming a guitar. She cut through the mall by swinging off of a pair of tree branches and then dove into the station just as the doors on the bus began to open. Out of breath and slightly out of shape, she bent over as the passengers slowly came off the bus and retrieved their luggage. Last off the bus was Ron, with a satchel slung over one shoulder and Rufus perched on the other,

"Hey, hey, KP, your Ron has arrived!"

*Rufus too!*

Kim managed to collect herself and approached the duo to embrace Ron with a giant hug and a kiss followed by a little rub on the top of Rufus' head. "Hello boys, I've missed you so much! How was your ride down?"

"Meh, a little cramped and the seat was a little too close to the bathroom, but it's all good. What's important is that I am here and rea-heh-heh-dy for a long week off from school with my girlfriend! Booyah!"

"And … what's this?" Kim asked pointing to a small patch of facial hair growing below Ron's bottom lip.

"It's a soul patch, KP. Just tryin' something different that's all."

"It, makes you look Quinn," she replied, obviously unimpressed.

"Well, that's good right? He's still a big Hollywood icon, no?"

"Not since he had all of that trouble with the law a few years ago. Now he's more of a B-list actor making the rounds of sad reality shows. Trust me, a few producers approached me about joining him on one after...well, you know."

"So … you don't like it?"

"Not in the least there sport," she said, giving him another kiss and wink. "How about you go grab your things and we'll head back to the apartment?"

Ron nodded and ran to the other side of the bus to retrieve his luggage, leaving Kim and Rufus by themselves.

"So, Rufus," she started in an innocent tone. "How upset would you be if say me and Ron had some 'alone time' for a few hours?"

*B-but, but buddy ...* the rodent said tearfully.

"Aw, Rufus, I've missed you too, but me and Ron haven't seen each other since Valentine's Day. It could get a little uncomfortable for you."

...

"Hey, you know what? We just had a new shopping center open up next to campus … and it has a Bueno Nacho."

Rufus simply blew a raspberry in response.

"I tell you what," she said pulling out her wallet. "What if I gave you $20 for a little shopping spree?"

*Hmmmm,* Rufus mumbled unimpressed.

"You drive a hard bargain, don't you? How about I make it $40?" she asked as she pulled out another couple of bills for added enticement.

*Um, Okay!* he chirped as he took the money, put on some sunglasses and bolted off in the direction of the mall.

Kim waved goodbye. "Don't get lost now!"

"Alright, I've got my bags," Ron said before looking around. "Um...where's Rufus?"

"Oh, he got curious and decided to go explore. I'm sure he'll be fine." Kim smirked and grabbed his hand. "Shall we go?"

"Well, Drewbie, I believe that does it for this load," the former villainess remarked sliding a final crate into place on the back of the hovercraft. "Every gadget, gizmo, thing-a-ma-jig and whatchamacallit you've made or stole is packed up and ready to move."

"Excellent work, Shego."

She stepped back from the hovercraft and took a glance at the now empty layer which she had called home for almost a decade.

"Ya know, as much as I complained about this place's lack of windows, damp walls and the shark-infested waters surrounding it. I actually think I'm going to miss this place."

"Agreed. So many memories were made within the confines of these stone, cavernous walls. Creating a second ice age in the middle of summer, coming up with the mind-controlling shampoo, the time we built a growth ray."

"Or the time we had all of our equipment repossessed, you accidentally launching yourself into space, turning the lab into a jungle," she said with a wink.

"There you go again, always focusing on the failures instead of the achievements."

"Well, the achievements were somewhat few and far between."

"Oh yeah? Remember the Drakken Dippin Pops we came up with?"

"The ones the FDA forced off the marked because they contained five ingredients banned in the United States?"

"Yeah, well … they were mad successful for three weeks they _were_ on the market."

"Uh huh!"

"And may I remind you that Abraham Lincoln spent several years failing at life before being elected President."

"I hate to break it to you Abe, but they don't allow convicted felons to run for office. Typically they get the felon part _after_ they're elected. Just be happy that you got a shiny medal and a plea deal …" Shego trailed off when she noticed Drakken looking around with a confused look. "What?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Well, here we are, home sweet home away from home," Kim said unlocking her apartment suite door and inviting Ron in.

Ron awkwardly looked at the walls, which were covered by various boy band posters and muscle-bound male models. "Wow, you've really … um … what's the word I'm looking for? 'Pop Cultured' it up since I last saw it."

"That would be the handy work of the new suitemate," she sighed.

"Hmmm, suddenly living with a toddler and parents isn't so depressing," he remarked gazing into the dead eyes of a shirtless Justin Bieber sprawled across a New York fire escape.

Kim unlocked her door and entered her bedroom which featured a much more tasteful decor. "Well, at least the inferior decorating ends at my room."

"So where is everybody?"

"Everyone else is already gone for break, " she replied shutting the door behind her and sneaking up to her boyfriend to caress his shoulders. "Meaning that it's just. You. And."

Ron squealed with glee running to her television set. "Your brothers' Z-box! You've got it here with you? And you have the Pro Wrestling game too! Awesome!"

"Me …" Kim trailed off before grinning mischievously. "You know what? I think while you bust chairs over Steel Toe's head I'm going to go freshen up." Kim pulled her hair out of its ponytail, kicked her shoes off and headed towards the bathroom."

"Hear what?"

"Shhh, listen?" Drakken hushed her as he looked around the room. "It's a ... thumping sound. There it is again!" he exclaimed as another louder bang was heard echoing through the walls.

"Are we expecting company?" Shego asked as another thud was heard coming from behind them.

"Someone or something is outside the bay doors," Drakken said as he began to walk to the front of the hovercraft towards the sealed entryway. "It's probably Dementor trying to get into his new digs a few hours early. That little man can't even let me exit my place on my own terms."

Drakken proceeded to the bay doors and leaned against them to hear if the banging was indeed coming from them. Right as he put his ear to the wall a giant bulge dimpled the steel. The thudding continued, creating another bulge, and another and another.

"Who the heck is out there?!" Shego exclaimed from behind the hovercraft.

"I haven't the foggiest, but it's definitely not Dementor. Too bad they won't get in. Those doors are twelve inches th-" Drakken was cut off by a strange sound which resembled a low whirring hum. Gradually, it increased in both volume and intensity. Something was charging up on the other side of the doors.

"SHEGO, GET DOWN!" Drakken screamed before a massive explosion blew through the bay doors and launched Drakken, Shego and the hovercraft high into the air.

"Oh, Rooooon," Kim called from her bathroom doorway modeling one of Ron's old jerseys which hung down to mid-thigh, "are you ready to get your spring break on?"

"Uh huh … yeah, sure!" he called from the bed, deeply engaged in a Texas Wind Deathmatch.

"Do you remember when you gave me this shirt? I sleep in it every night now."

"Yeah … cool!"

Kim seductively slid onto the bed behind her oblivious boyfriend and slowly made her way up Ron's body and began to gently rub his shoulders while he continued to play the video game. "You know Ron, it's been awhile since you and I had some 'us time'."

"Yeah, uh huh ..."

"And I was thinking, since we're all alone and have an entire week of nothing planned, that we should lock the bedroom door and not emerge from it for one … whole … day," she said as she gently kissed up and down his neck. "What do you think about that?"

"Sure, KP. Absolutely. Totally agree. Boom! CHAIR SHOT!"

It became apparent to Kim that her boyfriend was completely oblivious to her advances and decided to catch him off guard. "And afterwards, we can go down to the mall and get matching Mickey and Minnie tattoos on our foreheads."

"Yep, sounds great, KP. Uh oh. Pain King's got a car door. *SLAM!*"

Kim gave a frustrated sigh. "Okay, I guess it's on to Plan B then," she said grabbing the television remote and changing the television input from the game to one of white static.

Ron snapped out of his tunnel vision. "Hey, what gives? Why did you do thaaaaaa ..." Ron trailed off as he finally noticed that his girlfriend was wearing nothing but his old jersey.

"Well, now that I have your attention, let me ask you again." she said pushing him backwards on the bed and jumping on top of him. "How about we get our break on?"

"I uh … um ..." Ron was in brain freeze as he became very aware that Kim was only wearing the jersey.

Kim gave a very big smile as Ron's focus stuck on the bottom of the shirt as it rode up her hips. "Or do I need to be a little more persuasive?" she asked before slowly pulling the jersey off over her head.

Ron still seemed to be frozen as his eyes followed the shirt up until they got stuck on her bare chest. "Wow …"

Kim quited whatever he was about to say with a deep kiss. "Take me, Ron," she whispered gently into his ear before nipping his lobe.

Shego and Drakken crawled out from under the pile of debris and boxes which had buried them during the initial blast.

"What … the hell … was that?" she asked in between coughs.

"Not what, but whom?" a large deep voice boomed from the gaping hole in the wall where the bay doors once stood.

"Fine, and _whom_ do I hold responsible for blowing up our layer then?" Drakken shouted in disgust. "We're still in the due diligence period!"

"Oh, nobody important," a voice replied as a large dark silhouette began to appear in the smoke and dust obscuring the breached wall. "It's just little...old...me..."

"Who?" Drakken asked before his eyes snapped open. "You?!"

"That's right, Drakken. The prodigal son returns to his father with open arms."

Standing in front of the duo was a creature of immense size; standing well over seven feet tall and weighing several hundred pounds. His skin gave off a pale bluish hue and a mane of dark black hair flowed to the middle of his back. His body was covered in a purple hued armor with sets of spikes protruding from the shoulders. His face carried a terrifying snarl as white fangs protruded from his square jawed mouth while a pair of empty eyes glowed deep red."

"So um, Drew, would you like to tell me who your big blue 'prodigal son' of a friend here is?" a visibly shaken Shego asked.

"Well, um, my dear … do you remember when we agreed to no longer engage in unlawful and villainous activity?"

"Yeah," she replied stating the obvious.

"Okay. Well, do you also remember that time when the stock market collapsed and our 401k's took a hit?"

"Uh, huh."

"Well, um, I might not have exactly adhered to that agreement and may have engaged in some shady back door cloning activities using a hybrid of DNA from dead Lowardians as well as some of my own."

"You WHAT?"

"Hey, don't judge me. I was trying to make enough money for the both of us to get by."

"Oh, so instead of getting a real job or sticking to the plan, you decided to go behind my back and make Tiny here?"

"A real job? Shego, there ARE NO real jobs!" he yelled flapping his arms, "I had the technology down pat but it never made it to market because my prototype over there decided to break out of his incubation tube and head for the hills before I had a buyer."

"ENOUGH!" the intruder boomed, ending their squabble. "I'm going to make this short and to the point," he said pacing back and forth and pointing to Shego. "You're coming with me sweetheart, boss's orders."

"Me? The hell I am!" she said in defiance. "Nobody tells me what to do or where to go! Especially some big hulking science experiment."

"I figured you'd say that," he said cracking his neck and popping his knuckles. "If you prefer to do this the hard way, I'm more than happy to have it arranged."

"I insist," she said as her hands ignited with the glow of green flames.

"Alright, your funeral."

"I don't plan on dying today!"

"Wasn't talking to you," the intruder smirked as a small cannon emerged from his shoulder armor and pointed towards Drakken. The move came to a shock to Shego as she quickly glanced over to her partner in crime who was wearing an equally shocked expression while a small green dot appeared on his chest. The shoulder cannon began to glow orange and emitted a low hum similar to what was heard behind the blast doors as it was powering up and then unleashed a powerful energy blast shot of it which hit Drakken with so much force it blew him across the room and through a wall.

"DREW!"

"Avenge … me … Shego," Drakken whimpered through the hole in a weak and broken voice.

"Alright, asshole, nobody comes into our layer and pushes us around," she said with a vengeful charge on her assailant. He shot several more energy pulses from his canon but she dodged them and made it within striking distance of the intruder and began wailing on his chest and arms with little effect to show for it. The exchange resembled a been trying to sting a bear with Shego quickly landing more and more strikes across the intruder with little effect. Eventually, he picked up her attack patterns and countered her by grabbing her by the neck and pulling her several feet off the ground as she tried to break the hold and gasping for air.

"Then it pleases me to be the first," he said leaning in to face his victim.

Suddenly he jerked backwards and dropped Shego to the floor. Drakken had reemerged from the hole, jumped onto the intruder's back and began to strangle him with a large frayed piece of cable.

"Shego, move," Drakken shouted from behind the beast.

Gasping for air, she was able to roll out of the way while Drakken continued to swing wildly from behind. And although he had managed to free Shego from a crushed larynx, his strangulation tactic on the attacker appeared to have little effect. The intruder lunged backwards into a wall, crushing Drakken in the process with so much force that a cracked outline formed when they backed off of it. The resulting impact was too much for the reformed evil genius to bear and he let go of the cable and fell to the floor in a motionless heap.

Shego managed to crawl behind a pile of broken gadgets and watched helplessly as she watched the fiend lumber towards an old, large crate which had fallen out of the hovercraft. He picked it up as if it were empty, walked back to where Drakken laid, hoisted the crate high above his shoulders and slammed it down on the reformed villain. The crate seemed to explode in a storm of splinters which flew in every direction..

A tear rolled down Shego's dusty face. "D … Dr. D?" she managed to get out in a quivering voice.

"Dr. D isn't here right now," the trespasser said as his red eyes glowed through the debris dust. "But if you have an Ouija board handy, you might be able to leave a message."

"You … you BASTARD!" she screamed, jumping out from the rubble and attempted a full-on assault which again appeared to have very little effect.

"I don't have time for this futile act of desperation," he said lifting up his arm and swatting Shego across the room like a rag doll into another pile of rubble where she laid motionless and groaning in pain.

Shego tried desperately to stand up but the impact was so hard it had knocked her senseless. Eventually she managed to get herself up on her hands and knees but when she looked up, she saw the dark shadow of her attacker standing over her.

"As this 'bastard' was saying, you're...coming...with...me.."

"Boo … yah," Ron exhaled as a sweaty Kim dropped on top of his body. "That … that was amazing."

"I told you practice makes perfect," Kim replied before blowing a stray hair off her face and burying her cheek into Ron's chest. "I'd say we've come a long way since the tree house."

"No kidding! I mean … Wow! That thing. Should I be concerned about where you learned _that_?"

Kim just gave him a playful swat on the shoulder. "No! But you'd be surprised what you can find online these days," she said and chuckled.

"Ahhh, it's good to be back in your arms, KP."

"Likewise. Hey, know what?"

"What?"

Kim sat up slightly and began to playfully run her finger across Ron's glistening chest, "You weren't paying attention before, But I still like my idea that we lock the door and spend the rest of the weekend just as we are."

" _Just_ as we are? But Rufus ..."

Kim just laughed and rolled onto the bed beside Ron before throwing an arm and leg over him. "He's a naked mole rat, he'll fit right in."

"Yeah, speaking of which. Where exactly did Rufus go again?"

"I paid him to go hang at the mall for a few hours. I thought it might be a little traumatizing for him to be present as we got reacquainted."

"Oh, _oh ..._ "

"What do you say, love? Are you up for a _naked weekend_?" she asked nuzzling his ear with her nose.

"Well, since you put it that way. I -"

"HELL-OOOOOO Kimmie!" Bonnie said swinging the bedroom door wide open in complete disregard of the occupants. "I just wanted to tell you bye before I left for Denver. Hey, Ron, how's the quest for minimum wage going?"

"DAMMIT, BONNIE!" Kim yelled and quickly pulled the covers up over her body.

Unfortunately for Ron, he had been lying on the covers and thus fell out of bed.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I interrupt something? " she asked in an obviously faked tone of concern.

"GET OUT!"

"Oh, gosh darn it that's right, baseball cap on doorknob means you're busy studying, and the _jacket_ means you're getting poked by Ron. Not the other way around. Silly me."

"OUT!"

"Poked?" Ron asked in a dazed voice from the floor.

"Okay, okay, I'm leaving. Jeez chill out, Possible. Just don't forget to make sure everything is turned off and locked if you decide to go anywhere this week. Okay, bye you two!" the brunette said with a sheepish grin before pulling the door closed behind her.

"Stupid Bonnie. How can I be at a school with a student body of twenty-four THOUSAND people and I get stuck with her as a suitemate?"

Bonnie barged into the room once again. "OH, I forgot to tell you to make sure the trash goes out, to mail out the rent check by Thursday and if you two lovebirds decide to take your premarital relations outside of your bedroom; keep your oily asses off my recliner!"

Kim had had enough and in her anger grabbed the first object she could reach and threw it across the room at Bonnie.

Bonnie ducked under the flying game controller. "Whoa, someone's apparently not getting satisfied. Later losers!" she said before giving a mocking pageant wave and shutting the door.

As the door clicked shut again Kim grabbed one of her pillows, put it to her face and screamed into it, letting out a muffled yell of frustration.

A visibly pale Ron peeked up from the floor.

"I'm going to kill her," Kim moaned upon removing the pillow from her face. "I swear, supernatural forces from beyond this world are still punishing me for my actions last year."

Ron crawled back into the bed and joined Kim under the covers. "Yeah, you never told me exactly how Bonnie happened."

"After Haley dropped out last semester the school had to find a replacement." Kim motioned at the now closed door. "It wasn't too bad at first, but then a handful of weekends back when I came to visit you and the other girls were away she kind of took over. Hence the new living room decor."

"That sounds like her. Still how did she ever get in here? I thought you had to actually have decent grades to get accepted?"

Kim rolled towards Ron and gave him a deadpan look accompanied with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Oh … yeah … right. Sorry," Ron nervously rubbed the back of his neck and gave a nervous laugh. He had completely forgotten about the previous two years of Kim's life.

"What a way to kill the mood," Kim said with a sigh.

Ron gave Kim's shoulder a gentle push so she would roll onto her shoulder facing away from him and spooned into her. Ron just held Kim closely, rubbing her stomach and laid in silence for several minutes until he felt her body relax and let go of her desire to send Bonnie to an early grave.

Kim smiled as Ron's ministrations drained the aggravation out of her. It was one of the many things that she hadn't even realized she loved about him until he was gone. Eventually, the earlier physical activity began to catch up with Ron and his encircling arm went slack across her waist as he began to doze off.

While her boyfriend's body warmed her Kim glanced at various items adorning her walls. She looked at the old, tattered and autographed Global Wrestling Association poster of Pain King which was given to her as a thank you for defeating Anubus. Then glanced over at the picture of her shaking hands with President Obama as she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he had bestowed to her upon retirement.

"Hey, Ron?"

"Hummm yumm … yeah?" he asked drowsily as he woke from his nap.

"Do you miss it?"

"Miss what?" he asked as his hand started making tight circles on her stomach again.

"The old life. The missions. The villains. You know, saving the world. Do you ever miss doing that?"

"Eh, sometimes. Some days I think about it, but then I realized that the majority of those missions usually involved you saving me from some form of untimely death. So, it's kind of a toss up.

"Not true. You came through for me a few times too remember?"

"Yeah, but you probably could have gotten yourself out of those with a little quick thinking. You always did."

Kim shook her head. "Don't sell yourself short, Ron. There were several where there wasn't any way out for me."

Hearing the scowl in her voice Ron dropped it. "Why do you ask? Having second thoughts on retiring?"

"Sometimes," she admitted. "I guess it's me just reminiscing when I was something more than just another face on a college campus, that's all."

"Awh, KP don't look at it that way," Ron said after kissing her on the shoulder and increasing the size of the circles on her stomach. "You've accomplished more in the past 21 years than most people accomplish in their entire lifetime. Besides, you put away the majority of the most notorious villains before you called it quits. And for those few that are still out there, I'm sure Wade and that Ken guy have their numbers."

"Yeah, I guess."

"And how is that whole relationship going?"

"I assume it's going alright. Last time I talked to Wade they had been tracking some new guy. He didn't elaborate though. I guess since we're no longer having adventures anymore we've somewhat lost those privileges."

With those words, Ron suddenly thought that he had been given a great segway to propose to Kim.

Sensing a great time and opportunity, Ron rolled away from Kim and felt around the floor for his pants and the ring residing in the pocket. "Well, either way, KP I'm sure the world is in good hands. Besides," Ron said before grunting and feeling around some more, "who's to say that your adventures have ended?"

Kim gave Ron a quizzical look, but shrugged it off as Ron just being Ron. "Well, no. I'm sure we'll have other adventures. However, at the moment my studies are more important than globetrotting with Japanese toy moguls, secret ninja societies and getting special hair treatment in Paris." Kim was quiet for a second as Ron pulled farther away from her and continued to reach toward the floor. "I do miss Francois and those magic fingers of his," she said rubbing her hand across her head.

"So that," Ron broke off for a second as he moved away from Kim a little more, "explains the darker hair thing you have going on?"

"Unfortunately. Do you not like it?"

Ron continued to search around the floor. "I have to admit, I kinda like it. Makes you look mature."

"You're cute." she said before grabbing Ron as his search made him teeter on the edge of the bed and almost fall out. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, nothing, just trying to find something," an increasingly nervous Ron replied as his hand finally landed on his discarded pants. " So, Kim," he started while looking through the pockets, "you and I have been classmates, best friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, and lovers. Well, I love you and you mean the world to me."

Kim's confused look gave way to a smile. "Awh, Ron. I love you too."

"I've ... I've thought about it for a while and well, KP..."

"Yes?"

"I guess, what I'm trying to say is, wi … wil … wh … where is it!?"

"Huh?"

Ron's nervousness began to give way to sheer panic as it became obvious that the ring box and its contents were not where he had left them. His fears became realized when he slid his hand into the last of the pockets and two of his fingers poked out of the bottom exposing a hole..

"Oh no!" he shrieked under his breath.

"Ron, sweetheart? Are you alright?"

"I um … um … I uh ..." Ron fumbled for a recovery.

*BEEP BEEP, Beep Beep!*

Ron jumped on the distraction. "Did you hear that?"

*BEEP BEEP, Beep Beep!*

"Is that your Kimmunicator?"

"Yeah, but it hasn't gone off in almost a year," she said while quickly throwing the jersey back on and digging through the drawer of her nightstand to retrieve the old, dust covered device.

"Seriously? What kind of batteries did he put in that thing?" Ron asked as he rolled out of bed and retrieved his boxers.

"Who knows with him," she remarked, fidgeting with her hair before answering the page. "Wade? What's up?"

"Hey, Kim, long time no see, talk, chat, tweet."

"I know, seriously. What's up? Is something wrong?"

" Well, um … we have a situation, and it might be a rather big one."

"Is this something you can't handle?"

"Well, we thought it might be best that we bring you and Ron back in for this one. If you two are up to it, of course."

Kim gave Ron a quick glance, to which he gave a thumbs up. "Sure, we're in."

"Good. Some things have happened which we think you should know about. I'll radio a jet to bring you in and then it can swing by Ron's house to pick him up. Can you be ready for pick up near Autzen Stadium in about an hour? I know you no longer have your mission gear so just come as you are."

Kim glanced down at her minimalist attire and whispered, "Yeah, not going to happen."

"What's that Kim?"

"Um, nothing. I think the stadium is just ten minutes away. We can be there earlier."

"Well, I figured I'd give you some more time since I seemed to have woken you up. Wait, it's like three in the afternoon …" Wade trailed off as his face scrunched up in confusion. "What are you doing in bed at …" Again the young tech guru trailed off and then his eyes shot wide open. " _We_?" Suddenly his eyes became shifty and a devilish grin spread across his face. "Hiii Ron … enjoying your break?"

The redhead slumped down in slight embarrassment while Ron peered over her shoulder and into the Kimmunicator.

"Indubitably, Wade!" he crowed, flashing a thumbs up.

"Whoakay, boys, time to say bye to Ron's conquest," she said abruptly ending the transmission and turning to her boyfriend with a scowl.

"What?"

Kim shook her head. "It looks like we're coming out of retirement," she said throwing the Kimmunicator onto the bed and heading towards the bathroom.

"Where are you going?"

"To take a shower. Not that Wade hasn't caught wind of what we've been doing, but I am a little sweaty and smell like sex," she said passing through the door and throwing the jersey back out into the room. "Does Rufus still have that little pager of his? If so you might want to get in touch with him to let him know what's up."

"Yeah, got it KP."

With his love out of view and the sound of running water coming from the shower, Ron frantically began looking on the floor for the missing ring. He lifted the mattress, tossed the sheets and started going through various containers but to no avail. The ring had been lost.

"Well, so much for that idea," he said with a sigh.

"Hey, Ron."

"Yeah, KP."

Kim's disheveled head appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. "You do know that my shower has room for _two_ right?" she offered with a suggestive wink before disappearing back out of sight.

Ron's dejected look quickly transformed into a grin. "Boohyah."

-End Chapter 1-


	2. Chapter 2

**KIM POSSIBLE RIDES AGAIN**

 **CHAPTER 2 - Back in the Saddle**

Once they were cleaned up, Kim and Ron made their way to the rendezvous point outside of Autzen Stadium.

"Why so glum, Ron?" Kim asked looking back at her boyfriend moping behind her.

"Oh, it's nothing, KP."

"Are you still sulking because I made you shave your soul patch off?"

"I thought it made me look edgy."

"Yeah, no. Your facial hair isn't thick enough for it to look right."

Ron just gave Kim a morose look.

Kim rubbed his cheek gently. "Tell you what. I'll make you a deal, if you shave, _I'll_ shave."

Ron stood there dumbfounded for a second. "And by shave, you mean …"

**Hey wait up!** a high pitched voice chirped from behind them interrupting Ron.

Kim gave Ron a wicked smile. "There you are, Rufus. Ready to go on one more mission?"

**Uh huh. Uh huh!** the rodent replied as he climbed up Ron and perched on his shoulder.

"Uh, Kim my um … shoelace is loose. Keep walking we'll catch up with ya."

"Alright," Kim said giving the duo a perplexed look.

Ron stopped to 'tie" his shoelace and waited until Kim was a little distance away. "Did you get it?" he discretely asked Rufus.

*Yep!* the mole rat replied, proudly pulling out a black velvet box from the tiny backpack he had been sporting since Middleton.

"That's my boy. Was it expensive?"

*Meh*

"I'll pay you back, you know I'm good for it," he said opening up the box. "What's this?!"

*Ring, duh*

"Well, yeah I can see that but this," he said pointing to the diamond, "doesn't look like five carats."

*No, one*

"That's four carats short."

*This better*

"It's not your girlfriend"

*Not _your_ money!*

Ron just gave his buddy a deadpan look.

*Store didn't have five carats.*

"Fine," Ron said with a huff. "I'll make it work. What do I expect when I send a naked mole rat to do a man's job."

"Are you two finished with that shoelace yet?" Kim shouted from several yards ahead of the duo.

"Uh, yeah almost, KP," Ron said standing back up and jogging over to his girlfriend, while Rufus put the ring back into the backpack. "This isn't over, Rufus."

*Up yers,* the rodent replied with an accompanying rude gesture.

"Problems?"

"Nah, KP, you know how shoelaces can be."

She winked and pointed down to her sandals. "Not really."

"Yeah," Ron said with a nervous laugh. "So where is this jet supposed to pick us up?"

Just as the words came out of Ron's mouth, a rope ladder dropped right in front of them. The trio looked up and saw a black and purple Global Justice jet hovering several stories above them.

"It would appear that they're picking us up here," Kim said grabbing one of the lower rungs. "Looks like we're climbing."

"You'd think with all of this empty parking lot around us Wade could at least land the thing."

Kim just gave a shrug and started climbing up. "Not a clue, but there must be a reason. Besides, it's not like it's the first time we've ever had to climb into an aircrAAAAAAAAAAFFFFFFTTTTT!"

Ron stepped onto the first rung of the ladder when it suddenly began to reel itself swiftly back into the aircraft. The force of which launched the trio into the cargo bay.

Kim stuck a perfect landing after a few flips in the air. "Ha! Still got it!" she crowed.

*THUD!*

"Speak for yourself," Ron groaned from the heap that resulted from Rufus' and his landing.

"Hey guys!" Wade's voice boomed over the intercom as the cargo bay doors shut and the jet began to move. "Make your way into the cockpit and get situated."

Kim and Ron looked at each other and shrugged before making their way to the cockpit where they were greeted by a pair of empty seats and a view of the clouds rushing past them.

"Um, who's flying the plane?" Ron asked.

"That would be me," Wade said appearing on a monitor waving a joystick and sucking down a soda. "Don't worry, I've logged several hours on the flight simulator. Flying via remote is practically like being there for real. Please, sit down in the seats and buckle up."

"Just like old times then huh, Wade? You with your whole mysterious 'never physically present' gimmick."

"What can I say? I'm a sucker for nostalgia."

"Yeah, not so nostalgic for the spring-loaded ladder system," Ron said as he adjusted his clothes from the extraction.

Wade laughed nervously. "Yeah, sorry about that. Normally I would have landed the jet but its landing gear has been a little touchy as of late."

"Great, can't wait to see what happens once we actually reach our destination."

*Um ...* Rufus chirped tugging at Ron's sleeve.

"What?"

*I uh*

"What? Out with it!" Ron asked, still annoyed with his pet's shopping habits.

*I dropped it,* Rufus said.

"Dropped what?"

Rufus gave a nervous glance towards Kim, before making a hand motion simulating putting a ring on his finger.

Ron looked like he was ready to scream, but with Kim sitting less than three feet away he held it in. "You WHAT?!" he asked in a harsh whisper.

*The ladder jerk, yanked the backpack ...*

Ron put his head in his hands and moaned. "Not again."

Kim gently rubbed Ron's back. "Ron, are you okay? You've been acting … erratically since we …" Kim trailed off as she cast a glance at the screen with Wade still on it.

Ron bit his lip and began to turn a few shades redder as the news that Rufus had lost the second engagement ring and Kim's suspicions that something was going on sunk in. "Yeah, KP, I'm fine. Just mission jitters."

"Okay," Kim drawled out. She gave her boyfriend one final skeptical look and took hold of his hand as the plane flew on towards their destination.

A short time later, the jet began to lose altitude and descended into the mountains of Northern California.

"Alright guys, you're almost there."

"Are you sure, Wade?" Kim asked in concern. "All I'm seeing is the mountainside we are heading towards."

"Eh, KP, it's probably some secret entrance that's going to open up just as we're about to crash into the rock face," Ron said nonchalantly.

"Ron, we're not going to some villain's lair. Global Justice would never go with something so cliche and villainish. Right, Wade?"

Wade gave a nervous chuckle. "Actually, Kim. Ron pretty much nailed it."

"Just open it up, Wade," Kim replied with a mild glare at Ron's smug grin. "It's not our first rodeo."

"Fine," Wade sighed in disappointment. With a flick of a button two giant bay doors began to open, exposing the secret base contained within the mountain.

The jet slowed down and the landing gear deployed as the craft closed in on the approach. Kim and Ron watched in awe as the jet slowly hovered into the bay and landed in the center of a large landing pad.

"Well, at least the landing gear worked," Ron said.

The trio exited the jet and found themselves standing inside of a massive hangar with vast, high ceilings and heavy steel plating covering the walls. It was a mix of modern design and military might.

Ron gave a whistle. "Impressive but also unsettlingly empty."

"Yeah," Kim agreed. "Where is everyone?"

"Right here," said a voice from the far corner of the hangar.

Slowly the outline a short stocky figure emerged from the shadows and revealed Wade. Slightly older and slightly larger with the addition of corn rows on his head and some high school stubble on his face, but it was still the same old Wade.

"Sorry about not picking you up in person, but we've been a little ... shorthanded," he said as he greeted the duo with big hugs.

"That's an understatement," Ron said observing the base. "What is this place?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Welcome to Global Justice Headquarters," Wade said in fake exclamation with his arms raised above his head. "Located deep inside the Klamath Mountain Range of Northern California. This is where we base our operations out of now."

"How … quaint?" Kim said uncertainly as she gestured to the unforgiving baroness of the walls.

"Yeah, you like those walls? Twenty-five feet of solid rock with an additional fifteen feet of concrete. This place was built to withstand the impact of a Tsar Bomba-grade blast."

"Sounds a little excessive, don't you think, seeing as the Soviet Union isn't even a thing anymore?" Kim asked.

Ron rubbed his chin. "Yeah, and incredibly stupid as well. Seriously, concrete has less than half the strength of the native rock that this mountain is made of. Now, a good reinforcement grid could help with that, but it seems that if you are going to use all of that metal you might as well keep the bedrock and make a nice thick spalling shield on the inside surface."

Kim and Wade just looked at Ron in astonishment.

"What? I went to college too."

Kim's look moved from shocked to skeptical. "Uh, huh."

"Fine. I saw it on an episode of _How to Survive the Apocalypse_ ," Ron said in exasperation.

"A mainstream, quasi-reality TV show went into that kind of detail?" Wade asked.

Ron threw his hands up. "Okay, okay. After I saw it on the show I was interested and went online. I found a post-apocalyptic survival game slash simulation where each player has to build a bunker and see who can survive the longest. There were all sorts of engineers and physicist and other geniuses playing the game and they would talk all of the time about strengths of certain materials and attack effects. Happy now?"

Kim just smiled and patted him on the cheek. "So that was why you were asking dad about atmospheric scrubbers a few months back."

Ron answered with an awkward smile.

"Well, that was random. I missed you guys," Wade said before leading them across the hanger. "On the bright side the facility is kept at a brisk 65 degrees all the time. Which is nice when the occasional wildfire sweeps across the area."

"So ... if this is Global Justice's nerve center, where exactly _is_ Global Justice?" asked Kim. "The last time I was with them I was surrounded by agents, scientists and well, just a lot more people in general."

"You're looking at it," Wade sighed. "After the global economy tanked in 2008, all funding allotted to the Global Justice initiative dried up overnight, forcing it to shutter. All agents were either reassigned back to agencies in their countries of origin or were laid off entirely. The final act was Dr. Director hooking me up with Trepid before she was reassigned to a desk job in DC."

"I see," Kim answered taking in the vast emptiness before her. "You know, speaking of Trepid ..."

"Oh yeah, that's right! You've never met Trep have you?" Wade perked back up.

"No, we've only heard bits here and there. He doesn't seem to be one for publicity."

"Nah, not in the least. Very low profile. Probably a byproduct of being an agent for all of those years. Pretty cool guy, though. We seem to click."

"So, where is Mr. Low Profile?" Ron asked tentatively.

"He's down in another shuttle bay working on Betty. We should probably head down there and introduce everyone and then get you all briefed.

Kim and Ron nodded in agreement and followed Wade.

"Betty?"

Wade winked. "Yeah, you'll see."

After a couple of minutes of walking through a long, dark corridor Ron asked, "This is sort of overkill for just a 2-man operation don't you think?"

"Well, the long term goal is to try to revive Global Justice in some shape or form. Eventually we're hoping to add to the ranks and have a decent spy network established again."

"And the short term?" asked Kim.

"Short term is us. A couple of semi-pros with a few allies holding down the fort until this recession blows over and some form of funding can be acquired. Until then it's ramen noodles and phone cards."

"Ha, just like college life, eh, KP?" Ron asked.

"Huh?" Kim asked as if she was lost in thought, before rushing to answer. "Oh ... yeah, right."

"Yeah, this facility goes pretty deep into the mountains," Wade continued with his commentary. "One day we found a bunch of old dune buggies Global Justice mothballed. Which, we might, from time to time, race through the corridors when business is slow," he said innocently and grinned.

"Badical."

"Yeah, well, we can only do it when we can afford the fuel for it. At least that's one perk of this economic downturn, cheap gas."

"So how bad, exactly, are the financials?" Kim chimed in.

"About the same as when you were doing it. I've got a few revenue streams set up from some gadget patents I sold the rights to, but for the most part we're still a shoestring operation barely above asking for favors to get by. Here we are," Wade said while activating a keypad.

As the large double doors opened the quartet was greeted by the sounds of Junior Kimbrough, whose hypnotic blues music produced an eerie hum as it resonated and echoed through its vast interior.

Wade gestured through the doors. "Ladies first."

As they moved across the bay the sounds of drilling, banging and clicking could be heard coming from underneath a matte black muscle car which was situated in the center of the room.

"Hey, Trep!" Wade shouted.

"What?" Ken grumbled back from under the car.

"Come out from under Betty. Our reinforcements have arrived."

"Alright. Gimme a sec. Just … about … 'chit! Stinking bolt!"

Turning to Kim, Wade said, "Ken's method of stress relief is to work on Betty here."

"OH, COME ON! GET ON THERE YOUR PIECE OF ..."

The beeping of the horn drowned out the rest of Ken's verbal rant.

"Yeah, sounds _real_ therapeutic," Kim replied.

Ron gave Wade a quizzical look. "Did you just say reinforcements?"

"Come on, Ken. Shade tree mechanic time is over," Wade said ignoring Ron's question.

"Fine," Ken huffed as he scooted out from underneath the car and threw aside a wrench in frustration. Standing up he wiped his hands on a rag and grabbed a slice of pizza from a box on the roof of the car. "Seriously, who puts metric bolts on an American car?"

"I'm sure we can look it up later, but for now, I would like for you to meet your predecessors."

Ken flashed a steely-eyed glare towards the group while he finished the pizza slice. "So this is the famous Kim Possible," he said extending a tattooed arm in greeting.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet the person behind all of the stories," Kim replied as she shook his hand.

"Likewise," Ken answered before releasing Kim's hand and turning to Ron. "And this must be Ron … Sssssss ..."

"Stoppable," Wade whispered in his ear.

"Ron Stoppable, the improbable hero of the Lorwardian Invasion."

Ron's expression changed from mild annoyance to shock as Ken finished his statement. "Well, I wouldn't say that it was _totally_ me. I had some help," he said leaning into his girlfriend and shaking Ken's hand.

"Fair enough," Ken said before grabbing another slice out of the pizza box resting on the roof. "Sorry for pulling you two out of your spring break, but we felt it best to bring you in after all of the recent events."

"Recent events?"

Trepid raised an eyebrow and looked to Wade. "You haven't told them yet?"

"Told us what?" Kim asked increasingly worrisome after seeing Wade's facial expression turn sour. "What? What happened?"

The agent pursed his lips before turning his attention to the newcomers in an awkward manner. "Um, perhaps we should go discuss this in a better location. Wade, how about you go take our guests up to the War Room and I'll meet you in there once I clean up."

Kim, Ron, Wade and Rufus made their way down another corridor and into the facility's War Room, a large office area covered with various monitors which showed news feeds from across the world, security camera footage and interfaces which appeared to be tracking various satellites. Situated in the center of the room was a large round meeting table to which Wade ushered his friends.

Kim slid gently into a contoured bucket seat and anxiously tapped her fingers across the surface of the table while her counterpart discovered his chair's ability to spin.

Within a few minutes of the friends sitting down Ken entered the room wearing a pair of green military khakis and a black tank top. His auburn hair was now spiked in a manner which reminded Kim of her brothers and a slight freckle pattern had now appeared from under the black grime streaks across his face.

"Look at you all dressed up for the briefing," Wade commented sarcastically. "You could have at least gotten something with sleeves."

"Yeah, yeah, at least my shirt fits," Ken shot back.

"Aaaand we're back to the fat jokes."

"Um, guys?" Kim asked impatiently.

"Alright, starting from the beginning. I'm Ken Trepid, former L7 Global Justice Agent, currently furloughed and reassigned to Wade here to continue Team Possible following your retirement during your freshman year of college."

"We were called Team Possible?" Ron whispered to Kim who responded with a shrug of uncertainty.

"You'll be happy to note that, in your absence, Wade and I have continued the tradition of keeping the bad guys at bay and making it a little easier for people across the world to sleep at night. However, since your retirement there has been an uptick on the danger scale."

"That's … great," Kim said somewhat unsure. "How much 'uptick' on the danger scale are we talking?"

"Oh you know, disarm a few backpack nukes, stopping terrorists, preventing World War 3. Things like that."

"Oh," she answered slightly overwhelmed.

"You have to remember, Kim, that Ken here was one of Dr. Director's top agents. He dealt with a lot of heavy stuff while he was under her command. So, it was natural that it would follow him here to his new assignment."

"Yeah, the days of rescuing kittens from trees, and rich debutants from their Cuddle Buddy collections are over. We're dealing with a lot more meat and potatoes these days."

"Backpack nukes and terrorists," Ron said with a dismissive wave as he leaned back in his chair. "That 'kitten' that my KP rescued from a tree just happened to be a cougar. Compared to that some little backpack nuke is no big for my girl."

Kim gave Ron a smile. "Thanks for the support Ron, but I'm with Wade and Ken on this. Backpack nukes and terrorists are way more 'uptick' than what we used to do."

"Don't know, KP. Diablos and Lowardians seem pretty upticky to me. And World War 3 would be nothing compared to the horrors of Camp Wannaweep," Ron finished with a shiver.

Kim just shook her head and addressed Ken again, "So, what part of these 'meat and potatoes' happened to bring us back into the fold?"

Trepid moved his glare from Ron and looked at Wade for a signal which he sent back in the form of a simple nod. "Alright, here it goes. Shortly after the Lowardian Invasion, a great debate erupted amongst the world leaders on whether your former adversaries, one Drew Theodore P. Lipsky, a.k.a. Doctor Drakken, and one Sharon Goforth, a.k.a Shego should be praised for their contributions to end the attack or to whether they should be prosecute for their roles in countless plots and crime sprees which spanned for nearly a decade prior."

"That's dumb," said Kim. "If it wasn't for them, we'd all be pets to giant green warfaring aliens and their giant tripods."

"True," Trepid remarked. "Ultimately an agreement was reached that they had earned somewhat of a pardon for their efforts, but to ensure that they remained on the straight and narrow they were mandated to rejoin Shego's family in Team Go. The idea being that her brothers would be able to keep a watchful eye over them to make sure they didn't slip back into a life of villainy."

"Oh yeah, put the people who leave their video monitor feed on so their enemies can listen in on their conversations in charge of them. That makes a _ton_ of sense," Ron said with an eyeroll.

"Not to mention it was being around her brothers that led Shego to break bad in the first place," added Kim.

*Yeah, dumb,* contributed Rufus.

Ken held up his hands in a sign of surrender. "Hey, I wasn't a part of the negotiations, and when it comes to me and Team Go … Well, it's long story. Anyways, they were supposed to have vacated their layer outside of Upperton Bay earlier today and move to Go City. However, their hovercraft never arrived at Go Tower. Concerned that something had happened, a courtesy call was put into local law enforcement to check it out," Ken said grabbing a remote from a compartment in the table and turning on a monitor. "What the responding officers found was this. Brace yourselves."

The trio just calmly took in the images as massive amounts of destruction were displayed on the monitor. Pictures of overturned tables, shattered chambers, broken boxes and a destroyed hovercraft accompanied with a backdrop of smoldering debris.

Kim just shrugged her shoulders. "Looks better than their lairs typically looked after Ron and I visited."

Ron let out a long whistle. "Oh yeah, their lair looked a lot worse after the moodulator incident. And we didn't even see it until a week later."

"You wouldn't call us in for a wrecked lair," Kim said. "So, what happened to Drakken and Shego? Did they renege on the deal?"

"No. Earlier today, we received confirmation that both Drakken and Shego were victims of a devastating and deliberate attack. This was the result of that attack."

"Oh my gosh!" the trio gasped simultaneously.

"What happened to Drakken and Shego?" Kim asked again.

The awkward look Ken had shown in the shuttle bay reemerged as he shifted his eyes back to Wade as if to ask him to deliver the news.

Wade let out a reluctant sigh and stepped forward next to his partner. "Kim, Drakken … he didn't make it."

"You mean?" she nervously asked, hoping to not hear the inevitable answer that was to follow.

Ken took over the news in a manner which suggested that such context was all too familiar with the older agent. "They found him under a massive pile of rubble; crushed. By the look of the impact, it was probably quick."

"I don't believe it," she managed to get out. It was clear that the news of her on-again / off-again archnemesis' demise had hit her hard.

"I've got the autopsy pictures right here in this folder if you prefer to see for yourselves," Ken said pointing to a set of documents on the table. "I wouldn't suggest looking at them on a full stomach though."

"S-shego?"

"We don't know," Wade answered. "After the initial reports were made and the coroner moved out we performed our own investigation. There was no sign of her in the layer or in the surrounding water. We searched an area of several miles with no results. Several burn marks present in the wreckage and walls are from her signature powers so we have reason to believe that she may have been taken after a struggle, and, more importantly, that she fought back."

As Kim continued to stare aimlessly at the images of the destruction, her shocked expression morphed into anger. "Do you know who did this?"

"Yeah, we know _exactly_ who did this," Trepid said activating a holographic image in the center of the table. The projected image showed a hulking grey-skinned beast of a person with long black hair, dark red eyes and pointed ears lined with piercing. "Meet Akuma, the latest walking problem to show up on our radar. He's seven feet, 500 pounds of pure nastiness and he's been eluding us for months. Strands of his hair were found at the scene, positively placing him there."

"What ... who is Akuma?" Ron asked, nervously glancing at the hologram and shifting closer to Kim.

"We don't know much about him, but based on his physical appearance Wade theorizes that he's either a mutant or a Lorwardian holdout from the invasion, maybe both. What we do know is that he started showing up in early 2009 as a mercenary and has zero concern about hiding who he is. Committing crimes in broad daylight without even an attempt to cover up his identity."

"You said he has been eluding you. Does that mean you've been tracking him?"

"Akuma is the primary suspect in a slew of robberies we have been investigating over the past year. We know it's him, but he's in and out so quickly that he's long gone before we're even able to mount a response. Berlin isn't exactly the next town over you know."

"What has he been stealing?"

"Remember back in the day when Drakken intended to destroy the state of Wisconsin by using a laser drill and a magma pump, but instead ended up melting the cheese covered building?" Wade asked.

"Yeah, I remember. That was one of our earlier missions against him."

"Actually, the building _was_ cheese," Ron added, "it's a common misconception Wisconsinites have to deal with."

"Riiight, well what you didn't know was that the drill is actually known as the Deep Venture Project and was a collaboration between seven different scientific corporations and contractors created for energy exploration. It was intended to be used to access fossil fuel deposits deeper into the earth than any conventional drill could and more environmentally friendly than any kind of fracking technology could. However before the initial tests in the Arctic could be completed on it, Drakken stole it and the three of you had, no offense, seriously damaged it by turning it into a giant soufflé.

Kim slumped back into her chair. "Oh … awkward."

"Yeah, but not technically correct. We turned it into more of a fondue. Soufflés require eggs …" Ron trailed off when he noticed the 'not the right time' look Kim was giving him.

"Anyways, don't sweat it. You saved Milwaukee from a meltdown and these labs all basically have villainy insurance nowadays, so they were all made whole plus probably some extra money on the side. Now, fast forward five years later to the oil price debate where market speculators inflated the price to well beyond $100 a barrel and causing hardships on working people around the world. The idea to resurrect the drill project was tossed around and gained traction rather quickly. With the blessing and funding from the Department of Energy and several international counterparts the seven labs began to secretly rebuild the laser drill. Only except this next version would be more powerful and could go deeper than any other man made object could before."

Ron shook his head. "And people say that I'm not bright? Let me guess, it was stolen as well."

"Well, not exactly. For starters it was a logistical nightmare. It took more energy to power it than it produced, and because of that it could only run for several minutes before needing to shut down for maintenance, cooling and recharging. It wasn't as effective as they had hoped. Efforts however were made to try to remedy the power drain issue, but before that happened the global economy collapsed. With the collapse the price of oil cratered and since gas prices were under $2 a gallon, the Energy Department considered the issue resolved and the project was cancelled. The drill was dismantled and the seven labs took back the components which they individually had invested in and worked on, and the idea was never heard from again."

"I know how this goes," Kim leaned in with assumption. "This is where you say 'until something happened' right?"

"Earlier this year, there were several break-ins at various science facilities across the globe."

"And I'm assuming these facilities happened to be the seven with the drill pieces?"

"Precisely," Wade said flipping through more slides. "Laboratoires Fleur Bleue in Montreal, Canada; al Rezal Science Institute in Doha, Qatar; Selanne Labs in Helsinki, Finland; Dynamiq Technologies in Houston, Texas; Sudesh Labs in Delhi, India; and Haksoo Industries in Gagwon, South Korea."

Ken stepped in and continued, "All were hit within the last few months. All break-ins followed the same signature 'smash and dash' technique with Ugly here's mug plastered all over the security feeds. Like I said, he didn't even try to protect his identity. It's almost like he's mocking us with his recklessness."

"I remember when you were checking out the Korean one," Kim said to Wade.

Ron sat staring at his fingers deep in thought. "Hey Wade, I counted six labs this guy has broken into. You said the drill was created by _seven_."

"That's right," answered Trepid. "It's obvious Akuma's going after the drill components. At first it was hard to determine where he would strike next since the components were literally scattered across the world. However, now that there is just one piece left we can focus our attention on a single location and try to catch the hairy bastard in the act."

"Which, I am guessing, is where we come into this conversation," Kim said.

"Well, yes. We thought between the assault on your cohorts and the location of the final piece that you'd want to be a part of the take down."

"And where is the final component?" asked Ron.

"In the Research and Development department of the Middleton Space Center," Trepid answered.

"My dad's lab?"

"Yeah, we thought this might get a little personal. Akuma hasn't been kind to the scientists and security staff he's come across."

"Well, dad should be safe. He's still 230 miles above earth orbiting us on the space station."

"Yeah, KP, but all of his co-workers have known you for as long as you've been alive. A lot of them are friends of your family. Then there's Frederick. We love Frederick," Ron said referencing the lab's celebrity space chimp.

"Well, if it's any comfort, Akuma's frequently been breaking into these facilities after hours. And we have been in touch with the administrators of the laboratory and they are well aware that a very dangerous individual has his sights on their facility."

"Why would a space center be working with a bunch of energy companies? That seems a little out of place does it not?"

"I know this one!" Ron shouted enthusiastically. "Mr. Dr. P mentioned that they were working on a project that could possibly lead to mining on asteroids. That's why!" he said proudly looking at Wade for confirmation.

"Actually, yeah … Ron's right. There has been a lot of talk about space programs mining celestial bodies for decades. A drill that bores holes with amplified light instead of drill bits that could break would definitely be of interest to the space center. Nice job, Ron."

"Boo and yah."

"Easy there Buzz Lightyear," Kim said with a grin. "So, is there any kind of plan in place?"

"There's been no definite pattern to the break-ins so we aren't able to pinpoint an exact time to expect him to make a move. However, in discussing the threat with the lab we think we may have come up with an idea that we hope could narrow the plot to a specific day."

"And what idea is that?"

Wade picked up the thread. "Well it just so happens that tomorrow the Middleton Space Center will experience a 'major malfunction' in their physical plant, forcing the evacuation of all staff and furloughing all operations for 24 hours while 'inspectors' are brought in to check things out and ensure a worried public that there is no danger."

Kim nodded her head. "To which I'm assuming that the malfunction and evacuation are a ruse for us, the 'inspectors', to set a trap in the guise of a soft target?"

"Exactly," Ken answered. "If we're lucky and broadcast it wide enough, he might see it as a soft target and make his move. We can use the component as bait and attempt to trap him with one of those sticky gel grenades. Maybe after some convincing he might tell us who he's been working for."

"So you think he has an accomplice?" asked Ron, leaning forward in his chair and inspecting Akuma's hologram again with narrowed eyes.

"I'd say it's very likely. Akuma doesn't come across as the type who's into precision instruments and planning. I mean, with his methods of breaking and entering, he could be robbing banks, stores, and depositories. Obviously he's not, so that tells me that someone else is pulling the strings and he's just hired muscle. And whoever this mastermind is has gone through a lot of trouble to get what he or she wants. The problem is that due to my err … 'sidekick' being on spring break, and quite adamant to stay that way, in order to pull this off I'm going to need some help."

Ken motioned to Kim and Ron and continued. "Who better than the 'Girl Who Can Do Anything' and her loving boyfriend who possesses the Mystical Monkey Power?"

"You haven't been reading the headlines lately have you?" Kim scoffed as she tried to comprehend what was being asked of her. "It's been awhile since I donned the old utility belt. I'm known more these days for making an ass of myself."

"Like I said … the girl who can do anything," Trepid said with a wink.

Ron leaned forward even more in his chair and started to say something, but Kim's gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him short.

Ken continued ignoring the pair. "And I'm fairly certain if we pull this off, the whole 'Kimgate '08' period will be an afterthought."

This statement forced the former Team Possible back in their chairs wearing matching expressions of surprise.

"What? You don't think I know about your undergrad antics? We _are_ a spy agency remember?"

Kim blushed but said nothing.

"And, I uh … the whole Mystical Monkey Power? Um, yeaaah … it's not really a thing anymore. I kinda fulfilled my prophecy and it went away," Ron said with a lot of waffling.

Ken crossed his arms and blew some air gently from his mouth up towards his hair in a sign of slight frustration. "Look, I get it. It's been awhile since either of you suited up for something like this. I also get that by being here you're being deprived of a much anticipated vacation, but we frankly don't have any other options."

Ken relaxed his posture and continued. "The fact is that I wouldn't have let Wade call you in if I thought we could handle the situation on our own. Drakken is dead. Shego is missing and presumed dead. And those responsible for them, and the death and injury of several other scientist and security guards across the globe, are going to hit a target that we know with 100% certainty."

"If they acquire that final component," Wade picked up, "who knows what they intend to use it for? Guys, you said yourselves that those two didn't deserve this. Don't we owe it to them to at least try and save her if we're able to?"

Kim sat there for a second, apparently deep in thought about what Ken and Wade were asking of them. Slowly she looked up from her hands and grabbed the autopsy folder which Trepid had laid near her. She removed the photos and winced at the images of mangled bodies strewn through debris, and finally paused on the one of the broken body of the man whom had made it his life's work to end her own, only to find redemption at the end. She quickly closed back the folder and pushed it away from herself.

"Do you honestly think Shego might still be alive?" she finally asked.

"Akuma had to have had a purpose for attacking them. That reason had to have been to grab her. Otherwise, nothing else would make sense. Neither of them have posed a threat for quite some time. So, yes."

Kim continued to stare at the folder. "They didn't deserve this. Even if Drakken had never changed his evil ways … Nobody deserves to meet their end like this."

"Some people do," Trepid muttered.

Ron looked up from Kim and addressed Ken. "Not them though."

"So, does that mean we can count on your help?"

With lips trembling slightly, Kim stood up from her seat. "If this trap works and it gets us to Shego, then we're in," she replied as she placed her hand gently back on Ron's shoulder.

"We are?"

"Yes, Ron. This is what we do. We help people … even when they're people we don't want to help. And this Akuma person is going to find that out first hand!"

"I … guess I'm in too then." a much less confident Ron said, also standing up and joining Kim.

*Bring it!* Rufus chirped from Ron's shoulder, cracking his knuckles.

Ken's face cracked a smirk and he and Wade exchanged nods of acknowledgement.

"Excellent. We leave for Middleton tomorrow. In the meantime you're free to explore the facility and get familiar with everything. In the morning we'll get you prepped prior to deployment. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a 'major malfunction' to phone in."

"Morning?"

"Yes, I fixed up a couple of quarters just above the launch pad for you two for the night," Wade said. "One for each of you. Very comfortable and nothing like a barracks; spy agencies tend to have it a little cushier than the military. We'll have you well-rested and ready before you know it. Until then you're dismissed. There's a modestly-stocked kitchen down the hall, basic cable, a Z-Box, and the dune buggies for entertainment. Any questions?"

Ron turned a frowning glare towards Rufus. "Yeah, any chance of taking the buggies outside?"

Ron and Rufus had resigned to their quarters for the evening. Wade was correct, Global Justice had made efforts to make the living areas for their agents a little more hospitable than the rest of the base with their modern decor and sheet rocked walls. After slipping out of his shirt and pants, he crawled into bed and pulled out a red box from his pants and opened it.

Inside it was yet another engagement ring. This time it was two carats on a white gold band, purchased earlier in the day from a quick dune buggy venture to a jewelry store located in a nearby town. He sighed quietly to himself in disappointment that within a matter of a day he had managed to lose not one but two engagement rings. At least this one was superior to the single carat ring Rufus has purchased on his behalf.

Then there was a light tapping at the door.

"Come in," he said after hiding the ring under his pillow.

The door slid partially open and Kim discretely sliding into the room while rubbing her arms in a slightly awkward manner. "Hey."

"Hey," her boyfriend replied discretely making sure the ring was secured. "Everything okay?"

"I couldn't sleep." She shrugged and continued, "Mind if I join you?"

"Nah," he said opening up his sheets and patting the mattress in a invitation for his girlfriend to join him in bed.

She smiled at the offer, approached the bed, slid under the covers and spooned with her love. The bed was a single but neither of them minded the extra close quarters, especially Ron who gently caressed his hands up and down Kim's bare legs. The touching was well received and Kim responded by cuddling herself deeper into his form. However, he suddenly stiffened up when Kim closed her eyes.

Kim moved out of the spooning and rolled over so she could face Ron. "Ron, what's wrong?"

"Just nervous," Ron said frantically. "You know. Mission jitters."

Kim smiled sadly back. "No, Ron. I know your mission jitters. This isn't that. This is much bigger than that. It was bad after Wade called, but it has been a lot worse since the meeting. And just now. You froze. Please, hon, talk to me."

Ron's eyes shot open for a brief second and then he sighed. "I'm afraid."

"It's more than that though, isn't it? You've always been afraid on missions."

Ron shook his head. "Not like this. At least not before graduation. Everything changed with the Lowardians."

Kim just waited for him to continue.

"They were going to kill you, Kim. Not kill you with an elaborate villain scheme, but rip your spine out and stuff you like a trophy. I used to see it. In my nightmares. Your eyes close and your dead and I can't save you."

"But you saved me, Ron. You were a hero. You were my hero. You accepted the Mystical Monkey Power and you saved me and the whole world," Kim said as she wiped a tear from her cheek.

Ron scoffed. "Yeah, a hero. Not so much. I killed them, KP. I didn't kill them on accident. I killed them because I wanted to kill them. I was angry that they threatened you like that. And when the Mystical Monkey Power flowed through me unchecked I went from angry to cold rage. I meant to kill them. And even after they were dead, I wanted to kill everyone and everything else that would threaten you."

"But you didn't."

"No, because, when I saw you on the ground and I saw the fear in your eyes … I realized that _I_ was the threat. I used to have nightmares about that as well. I wasn't able to stop it and I killed you. I killed everyone," Ron said before a deep sob escaped. "Kim, I enjoyed it."

"Shhh … It's okay, babe," Kim said as she pulled him into a hug. "They're just nightmares. They're just your mind trying to cope with a very stressful situation."

"But they aren't anymore. You saw the images of Akuma. He's a Lowardian. I'm sure of it. And we're going to face him tomorrow. What if he kills you? What if Sensei lied to me about the Mystical Monkey Power being gone and I kill you? I'm afraid. And when you close your eyes, all I can see is you dead."

Kim leaned forward and kissed Ron. "Then we just need to override those images," she said as she closed her eyes and reached down to his hand and moved it from her legs to a more intimate region of her body.

"Kim?"

"It's okay. Besides, I need this too. Those images Ken had of Drakken. After the meeting ended and you headed out on the dune buggy, I went back through folder and looked at them again. I can't get them out of my head," she whimpered as Ron began to move his hand. "Every time I close my eyes, all I see is that mangled body in the rubble. We both need something better to envision when my eyes are closed."

Ron kissed his girlfriend passionately. "I love you so much."

"I love you too," Kim said before gasping as Ron's other hand slipped up under her nightshirt.

*KNOCK KNOCK* banged against the door to Ron's room where he and Kim laid asleep in bed. Kim's leg hung off the mattress while Ron pooled drool on his pillow and held her torso close with an arm across her chest.

"Rise and shine Stoppable," Trepid shouted opening the door and flinging on the lights.

"Huh whu ..." the two slurred in startled unisom resulting in Kim rolling onto the floor.

Seeing more of Kim than he intended, Ken quickly spun to face out the door. "Well, good morning you two," Ken said with a chuckle as Kim grabbed a blanket to cover herself and stood up. "I guess now is a bad time to tell you that Global Justice has a strict policy against cohabitation in the residence areas."

"Yeah, well, lucky for us we _aren't_ Global Justice agents," she grumbled, before collecting her clothes and pushing Trepid out of her way as she stomped back to her room.

"Get some breakfast and a shower and meet me in the armory in thirty minutes. We have a big day ahead, and lots to go over," he shouted to her down the hall.

"Yeah, yeah," Kim said before disappearing into her room.

Ken then turned to Ron who was in the process of impersonating a lobster in color, which resulted in an eyeroll.

"That goes for you too, Hoss."

Donning a Global Justice issue t-shirt and sweatpants she found in her quarters, Kim entered the kitchen.

"Mornin', KP," Ron called out as he closed the oven door.

Kim glared at her boyfriend as she took the cup of coffee that he presented to her. "It's getting better," she said after taking a sip.

Ron kissed her on the cheek as he walked around the counter and sat two plates with sausage and eggs on the table. "Muffins need a couple more minutes."

Kim took a seat across from Ron and pensively ate her breakfast. "Ron, are we in over our heads?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? _This_ … all of this ..." she said pointing to the reinforced walls which made up the room. "We've agreed to help a guy we barely know attempt to trap some sort of mysterious man-beast who's out there killing people."

"We've only dealt with anything like this once in our careers, with the Lowardians and look at what that did to you. Our villains were always kind of goofy, and their crimes were borderline glorified shenanigans. You know, Senior Senior Junior trying to steal a cookie recipe, Dementor and his mutant dachshunds, Drakken trying to become a pop sensation to hawk mind controlling shampoo." Kim sighed and said, "I still can't believe he's gone."

Ron reached over and took her hand in his. "I know and I'll be okay. I was pretty much over it until I saw that image of Akuma. I don't know. Seeing another Lowardian just seemed to trigger something inside me," Ron said before the timer went off and he stood up get the muffins. As he passed Kim he leaned over and gave her a deep kiss. "But, you certainly helped with that last night."

Kim giggled. "Yeah, well I think the last time was technically this morning."

"God, I loved sleeping next to you all night."

"I know. And if it wasn't for Ken it would have been great waking up next to you as well," Kim said before finishing her eggs and grabbing a muffin. "I keep wondering what happened to Shego."

"Do you think she's still alive?" asked as he grabbed a muffin as well.

"I don't know, but if she is this Akuma guy knows her whereabouts, and we owe it to her to find out who's behind it and why. I just don't know if we can take him."

"Well, Mr. Trepid seems fairly confident that we can take him as a team. I on the other hand am very confident in my KP."

"Thanks, but it's just been so long that I'm have my doubts."

"Now KP, you're _still_ the girl that can do anything right?"

"So I'm told," she said with a shrug. "We'll find out."

Ron turned serious. "Are you nervous?"

"I'm a little worried, yeah," she admitted. "Shego's as tough as they come and even she couldn't fight him off."

"True, but in the same light, how many times did _you_ beat Shego? You have the better record which I would think means you're a more formidable opponent than she was."

"Yeah, but I'm clean. She knew that my goal was to always make sure my opponent ended up in the back of a police van not in a body bag. If Akuma attacked them the way that the images suggest, then she would have done things differently. Shego always talked about 'the more direct approach' but she never went that far to actually try it. At least not to me."

"I don't know, KP. What I do know is that you're one bad mamma jamma and Trepid gives me the impression that he um, 'loves the Second Amendment,' if you know what I mean. So maybe we are better prepared for a fight than a pair of unarmed people who were blindsided."

"Yeah, he does look like the type who enjoys a little more firepower than a grappling hook. There's just so many unknowns."

"I know. Let's just trust that Wade knows what he's doing. We might not know Trepid, but we know and trust Wade's judgement. He's got an IQ of 500 or something afterall."

"Alright," Kim said as she stood and took the dirty dishes to the sink.

Armed with a fresh cup coffee and a muffin, the pair trudged their way down to the armory which was more a of large empty room than what the name had implied. Once inside they found Ken and Wade engaged in an intense strategizing session.

"Ah, there's the old guard," Wade said looking up over his partner's shoulder.

"Yayup, up and at-em," enthused Ron in response.

"What's up Wade?" Kim asked admiring the bare walls. "Is this one of those armories where you hit a button, the walls open up and all of the gear and gadgets come out with some fancy green backlighting?"

Wade's smile quickly faded into a scowl, "Actually it's blue. Seriously you two, we finally get a place with a slew of nifty bells and whistles and you guys keep spoiling the cool reveals," he remarked while pressing a button on a hand-held device. As predicted, a brilliant blue light began to shine through fine lines in the wall while a slew of panels opened up revealing an arsenal of shiny new gadgetry.

Kim stared in open mouthed wonder. "Wow, that's a big step up from a grappling hair dryer and a decoder pocket mirror."

"Yep, Global Justice gave us a slew of their finest gadgetry to use in their absence. Although, that old grappling gun of yours still gets its fair share of use, but I think you've outgrown it. Care to see what we got instead?"

Kim and Ron both nodded their heads with enthusiasm while Rufus hopped down and ran to a rack close by.

Wade motioned them to a counter which rose from the floor. "Alright, since you mentioned your trusty grappling hook, let me show you its replacement," Wade said pulling out a pair of gloves from a case. "Behold, _grappling gloves_. How about you slide those babies on and tell me what you think."

Kim obliged and slid the dark grey gloves on over her hands. They were long and went up nearly to her elbows in length and had a tight fit up her arms.

"Very nice," she commented as she modeled her hands from her front to her back and then again to her front. "Very light and very stylish."

"They're made from an experimental composite of ultra-thin Kevlar and spandex for high durability without giving up movement. It may be thin, it may be light, but you'll be able to deflect a katana blade with your arms."

"Niiice," Kim said noticing some bulk near the hand area. "What about this?"

"Ah, like I was saying, these are a replacement for your grappling gun. A tiny carbon fiber grappling hook and wire system is built into each wrist, and is triggered by posing your arm like so and then moving your wrist like so," Wade described as he bent his own wrist at a slight angle and made a small motion as to cock his arm. "With a little practice you can use the gloves in the same way Spiderman uses his Webslingers to move around New York City."

"Interesting."

"And to top it off, on the back of your left hand is a new and improved com link. It's similar to the Kimmunicators except it's not a giant bulky plastic brick or a domed wrist-accessory like your other models."

"Sleek and compact. Very nice, Wade."

"Yeah, plus it has built in Wi-Fi for when you're in need of a hot spot out in the jungle. Next, we got your standard utility belt armed with all of your typical L1 particulars: smoke bombs, first aid kit, suction cups, emergency landing gel, all stuff you're fairly used to working with."

"And then finally, new boots. They're made to withstand rugged terrain with soles strong enough to prevent piercing from nails and other sharp objects. And of course, they come with the standard issue rocket boosters built in for those tight spots."

"Are the roller blades included?"

"Absolutely, even though _some_ of us wanted them taken out because they thought they looked stupid," Wade grunted with an eyeroll in Trepid's general direction.

"What? I just said I liked the old-school versions better," Ken defended.

"Yeah, I call it someone doesn't' know how to use inline skates."

"Whatever, Wade."

"That's it for gadgets?" Ron asked.

"Yep."

"But, uh … what about those?" he asked pointing to Rufus who was looking over several shelves filled with a slew of firearms ranging from small handguns to shoulder-length launchers.

*Ewww ... McMillan TAC-50. Sweet,* cooed Rufus as he inspected the heavy rifle.

"Ha ha, yeah, right," Trepid laughed. "No firearms are issued to anyone until they've reached L3 status and have had proper training."

"Oh … but w-"

"And are _only_ to be issued and used by Global Justice agents," Ken finished over Ron. "Seeing as 'Red' here made it clear that neither of you are agents earlier. No guns for you."

Ron took a step toward Ken. "What do you mean by 'Red'? If that's a crack about ..."

Kim stepped between Ron and Ken and smiled at Ron. "Come on, Ron, like Wade would trust us with guns. You lose your pants half the time you use a grappling gun, and the less said about my infamous '98 fair shooting gallery incident the better."

Ken gave Wade a perplexed look at Ron's reaction. "Anyways, the only thing left I guess is some proper threads."

"Yeah, I'm not really feeling the sweat pants and t-shirt look," Kim said staring down at herself. "Ever get that battle suit working properly?" she asked Wade.

"Nnnnnot, exactly," the young genius said with a shrug. "I'm making progress but it's going to probably call for an entire redesign of the suit to ensure that it functions properly. But, a while back we put in a little commission to a mutual fashion-designing acquaintance of ours in the event your services would ever be needed," Wade continued pulling a small box out from another compartment and handing it to her. "We'll wait here while you go try it on. Oh, and while I was at it I took the liberty of getting you a pair of contact lenses from the med bay."

"Do I even want to know how you got my vision prescription?"

Wade gave her a cheshire grin. "Oh, come on Kim, do you really think the University of Oregon's medical records are _that_ secure?"

"Apparently not. Hang on, I'll be right back."

Several minutes later Kim made her way back into the armory. Her glasses were now gone along with the ponytail. Her hair was now let out in her signature waves.

"So how do I look?" she asked with a slow spin.

Kim's new look was an updated version of the outfit she had worn her senior year in high school. The black and purple boot-cut pants were replaced with pants that were now dark gray like the gloves accompanied by now a light blue stripe which traveled up the sides. Her top featured a two-tone pattern that had a light blue shirt which had darker blue stripes which ran down both her sides and shoulders. And unlike her older shirt, she now had a slight collar which ran a couple inches up her neck. Finishing out the ensemble were the new boots, gloves, utility belt, and a set of elbow pads.

"Wow, KP, Monique really outdid herself this time," Ron said in approval.

"Yeah, no kidding. I should probably use her for all my clothing needs," Kim joked.

"Actually, if all goes according to plan and we get some sort of semblance of normalcy back to this place, we're going to try to contract her out to create new uniforms for all of us," Ken commented.

"Well, Global Justice will definitely have some style if that's the case," she said as she approached her boyfriend. "You're blushing, Ron. Like what you see?"

"Yeah, KP. Dang that uniform makes you look hot!" he said. "It's like we never left."

"Yeah, I know. I still can't believe we're back doing this sort of thing. Hmmm, this shirt is very slimming," she said pinching a small patch of flab on her side.

"So, um, what about el Stoppablerino?" Ron said pointing to his chest. "What do I get for new duds?"

Ken and Wade exchanged glances before turning their smiling faces back towards Ron. "Oh, and oldie but goodie," Wade said.

***Several Hours Later***

"It's criminal,"

"What is?" Kim asked her moping boyfriend while the two of them made their way down to the hangar carrying some supply crates..

"This," he said pointing to the black turtleneck shirt he was wearing, "You come back into the game and you get the whole _G._ look going on while I have the whole … the whole ..."

"Sidekick?"

"No! Buffoon going on … _again._ "

It was true, due to budget constraints Wade only had the funding to update Kim's mission gear to a sleek new look while Ron was forced to wear the same old grey cargo pants and black turtleneck he had worn as a look since he was a high school freshman.

"Oh, Ron, you were never a buffoon. You heard Wade, once they get some funding back, they'll get new outfits made. Besides, I think it's still a good look on you no matter what. Even when I got the purple outfit you were rocking that."

"Yeah, yeah, says the woman with gloves that can block sword attacks."

"And that doesn't mean that I'm looking to get into a swordfight with someone to see if that's true either. Seriously, don't be jellin' Ron. It's not what's on the outside that's important."

"For the apparel oft proclaims the man."

"Hamlet?" Kim asked in awe.

"Yeah, and this apparel proclaims who I used to be. A person that I don't want to be again. That person wasn't good enough. That person was a screw up … and you left him."

Kim set down the crate she had been carrying, took Ron's face in her hands and made him look down at her so that they could make eye contact. "This apparel was not worn by a screw up, nor was it worn by a buffoon. It was worn by the bravest person I have ever known. The man who wore this outfit was the man who started me on this path. He was the man who has helped save the world and countless lives. He was the man that I fell in love with. And he is the man that I love now. Leaving you was a huge mistake, but it was my mistake not yours. One that I assure you will never happen again."

Ron knew he didn't have a decent response to that so he simply bit his lip while shifting his eyebrows in a manner suggesting Kim had gotten her point across.

Giving him a quick peck on the lips Kim picked her crate back up and led Ron into the main hangar where the jet was being loaded with supplies by Trepid and inspected by Wade.

"Well, if anything it's good to see that you're looking a little more confident than what you were this morning."

"Yeah, I think a good dose of Ronshine accompanied by the new gear and threads helped with that. Now I feel like I know what I'm doing again."

"Everyone suited up and ready to head out?" Trepid asked them, himself now dressed up in his own battle gear consisting of a vest loaded with pockets and harnesses strapped all across his body.

"Ready as I think we're going to be," Kim confidently replied tightening up her new belt.

Ron discreetly patted the sides of his pant legs to confirm that the little ring box and its contents were secured and accounted for on one side and that Rufus was deep asleep within his other cargo pocket.

"I'm rea-heh-heh-dy to roll out myself!" he seconded.

"Good, let's get this last bit of gear onto the jet and we'll be ready to go. I'll brief you on the way to Middleton."

\- End Chapter 2 -


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

"Psst! Kim, Ron...wakey wakey!"

"Humng whuh?!" The duo grumbled as they awoke from their cargo bay nap and found Trepid standing over them.

"Am I to assume that the coffee didn't have the desired effect?"

"You could say that," Kim replied with another yawn.

"Well, I need the two of you need to get up. We're about ten minutes out and I need you to get buckled into your seats. Safety protocol and all that whatnot."

"W-wait," Ron said in a slight panic. "If you're here…"

Trepid's eyes shifted to a less serious expression. "...who's flying the plane?" he answered.

"Uh…well,"

"Did you forget how the two of you arrived at the base yesterday?" he said referring to Wade's ability to fly the jet via remote.

"Oh, right, wasn't thinking."

"Yeah … I could see that," he said, showing concern about his company.

Ron stretched again then climbed onto the cargo bay bench and strapped himself and Rufus securely into place. Kim on the other hand, noticed the slight Trepid had made towards her boyfriend and took it upon herself to confront him.

"Stay here Ron," she said stomping towards the cockpit.

Ron obliged, and when his girlfriend was out of view, reached into his pocket to make sure the ring he had in his pant pocket was safe and secure.

"You know you didn't have to do that," Kim scolded the agent while sliding into the co-pilot seat next to him.

"Do what?

"I saw that look you gave Ron."

"What? For stating the obvious?"

"Ron might not be a Rhodes Scholar, but he's not an idiot."

"I never said he was." Trepid responded, flexing his fingers on the jet's yoke.

"You didn't have to," she continued angrily. "If I had a dollar for every time someone questioned his intelligence I'd h-"

"You'd have the same amount as I would have if I got one for every time someone freaked out and saw me not flying a jet which can be flown via remote," he said shutting her down in mid sentence.

Kim gave him a look, unimpressed with his response.

"Look," Trepid said, "I know you're protective of your him. I know that when you were down on your luck exploring the depths of being a college coed that he was there for you and brought you back from a series of really bad decisions. I get that. Plus if I had any serious doubts about either of your abilities to work this mission, you wouldn't be here, would you?"

Kim remained silent for a few seconds longer before finally nodding in agreement.

"Good. Now since that's out of the way, how about we land this jet?" he asked assuming control of the aircraft and began the landing process. "Better strap yourself in, this can be a bit bumpy."

Within a matter of minutes, the large silhouette of the Middleton Space Center began to emerge over the horizon. As the jet approached, Trepid powered down the primary engines and engaged the vertical thrusters which brought the craft to a hover and then proceeded to descend into an empty parking lot adjacent to the facility.

"Looks like we're here," Ken said shutting off the engines and unbuckling his belts. "Let's go see what fun awaits us."

The cargo bay doors opened and the team stepped out. As planned, the "malfunction" had went into effect and the mandatory evacuation of the complex had been successfully completed.  
The emptiness of the place in which Kim had spent so much of her childhood gave her chills and the uneasiness which had plagued her yesterday began to inch back into her body.

Ron, who had seen the troubled look across his girlfriend's face, asked, "Everything alright KP?"

"Yeah, Ron, everything's fine," Kim said at the sight of the empty Space Center. "It's just so odd seeing this place so …"

"Deserted?"

"Yeah. I've never seen it so empty. I'm so used to seeing the hustle and bustle of scientists and engineers everywhere, this is just awkweird."

"And a little creepy," Ron added.

"Well at least everyone followed our plan to stay home," Ken injected into their conversation. "If things go south, at least the risk of collateral damage is low."

"You are so reassuring."

"I try," Trepid winked.

"So what's the plan now?" Ron asked.

"Well, according to Wade, he has a lone contact still here that we are to meet up with. And then from there we can formulate our plan with their help."

Just as he had said that, the group heard a strange whirring sound coming from the top of the steps of the main entrance.

"Do you hear that?" Kim asked, clenching her fists and moving to a preemptive attack stance.

"Yeah, I hear it," answered Ron who also went into formation.

"Easy you two," Trepid replied calmly. "I don't believe that's anything dangerous."

"How do you know?"

"Call it a hunch," he said noticing a shiny robot begin to roll down the steps towards them.

"You don't believe?" Ron asked increasingly nervous. "How do you know that's not some death machine drone Akuma is using?"

"Not his style. Plus, the little MSC logo on top of it kinda removes all doubt," Trepid said nonchalantly and walking towards the approaching robot.

"Oh."

The robot was equipped with a small video monitor attached to its top onto which after a few seconds an image popped up of a familiar face.

"Well, if it isn't Vivian Porter," Kim said relaxing her stance and approaching the robot. "Nice to see you are still enjoying robotics."

"And it's nice to see you're still into crime fighting," she replied messing with a stray hair in her face on the screen.

"Well, not exactly. It's technically my first day back."

"Eh, knowing you it should come back to you like hopping on a bike," the blonde said from what appeared to be a laptop on her couch. "So, as you can probably tell from the way we are talking to each other, I'm telecommuting today. We were all told about the 'malfunction' which occurred last night followed by how none of us were supposed to come into work today due to 'safety concerns.' However, I was contacted by Wade last night and he filled me in on your plans and I offered my assistance. So here I am via proxy to help you all out with whatever you might need."

Ken walked up to the monitor and injected himself into the situation. "Vivian, this is Agent Ken Trepid of Global Justice, we need to know where MSC's component to the Deep Venture Project is housed so we can access the situation and plan our next moves accordingly."

"Ah yes, the mirrors. Not a problem," she answered after taking a bite of Chinese takeout. "Let me know when you're ready and I'll walk you there. Well, roll I guess is a more proper term," she joked.

The team gathered up their gear and followed Vivian inside the dark, empty corridors of the Space Center. A slight uneasiness came over the group as they walked past room after empty room which were typically filled with the hustle and bustle of some of the greatest minds on the planet.

"So Viv, you said you had mirrors here?" Ron asked.

"Correct. High precision, very delicate, very expensive mirrors similar to what we use on our space telescopes. They're so precise that when we were creating them, we had to do it late at night because we were afraid that vibrations from cars in the parking lot would disrupt the polishing process. We didn't want to find ourselves with another Hubble fiasco, especially with funding drying up," Vivian explained.

"A few years ago, we discovered that we could apply the same mirror technology we used in telescopes in laser drills, resulting in a superior light pulse capable of immense power. Toss in my skills in robotics to automate the process and viola! High-powered laser technology." She sounded quite pleased with herself, leaning back in her seat and grabbing another bite of food.

"Hmmm, who knew?" Ron said.

"And here we are," Vivian said rolling up to a pair of elevator doors. "The components are just through these doors and a short elevator ride up to the control tower."

The doors opened and the crew loaded into the lift and began their ascent.

"Why have it all the way up in the control tower?" Ron asked.

"Well upon our discussions with Wade," Vivian explained, "we concluded that it best to put the components in the least accessible area of the center. Which in our case would be the control tower. It's ten stories high, separated from the rest of the buildings and only accessible to and from an elevator."

"Yeah that's not a fire hazard," Trepid muttered uncomfortably.

"Probably, but hey this place is a product of the 80's so maybe it was grandfathered in." She said, giving a slight shrug.

"At least there's a lot of windows to jump out of in a pinch, right Possible?" He winked at the redhead.

"Oh, yeah. Do you know how long it's been since I last swung from a grappling hook?" she asked rubbing the back of her neck apprehensively.

"Freshman year in college. Seattle. Botched Nautilus Wheel mission, right?" he quickly answered.

There was a moment of silence as the group looked to the agent with varying expressions of intrigue of how he knew that.

"What?," Trepid asked, raising his hands almost defensively, "I took over your missions remember? Don't look so surprised, I read the dossier."

"Wade kept mission briefs?" Kim asked.

"Yeah," Trepid said with a nod, "Going all the way back to time you and Ron switched bodies."

"Seriously?"

"Yep, I bet those were an awkward couple of days." he grinned.

"You have no idea," Ron injected. "I had to pretend to be a cheerleader and KP kept going into the girls bathroom on accident ..."

Kim gave him a glare followed by an eyeroll at the comment. "Ron, we agreed not to talk about that!" she grumbled.

"Yeah, I bet shower time got a little awkward," Ken cracked.

"No comment," they both quickly replied in squeamish unison shortly before a bing sound was made in the elevator.

"You'll be fine," Trepid assured.

The lift came to a stop and the doors opened, revealing the inner rotunda of the control center. The edges were lined with an array of monitors, controllers and mainframes which kept track of all of the missions, satellites and telescopes the center was responsible for. In the center of the room was a large palette upon which sat a very large canister wrapped in protective casing.

"As you can probably guess, the mirrors are contained within that canister," Vivian pointed out. "We did our best to insulate and protect them but please do your best to not get them dinged, dropped, damaged or anything else that would be bad for them. Granted our villainy insurance is paid up and that container is designed to withstand a small nuclear blast, but we have plans for them in an upcoming telescope project we have been working on, and any disruption to that would seriously delay the project."

"We're only planning on using it as a lure, if all goes well that is all it will be," Trepid assured her as he inspected the bright yellow canister.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to anything more." Vivian shrugged. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a few readings to take down in the labs that I need to log. In the event that you need it, there is a break room with vending machines and a restroom through that far corridor. Oh, and Ron … don't forget the next Robot Rumble is in two weeks. It'd be awesome if you and Larry came down to root for me and my newest entry. I'm calling it 'The Ace of Blades'. Hope to see you there!" she waved as her robot made its way back into the elevator, and the doors shutting behind her.

"You … and Larry … are actually going out and doing things? Together?" Kim asked her boyfriend astonished.

"Oh well, you know. He still has a year before he graduates high school and most of his friends are already off to college." Ron said, looking a little sheepish.

"Yeah?" Kim prompted.

"And well, you know. He likes robots that blow things up, I like robots that blow things up …" Ron said, trailing off.

"Uh huh," she continued in a teasing tone.

"I mean, it's not like we go out all the time, but you know, occasionally, I like to hang out with my in-la- … errr, intelligent friends every once in awhile. You know?" he said catching a Freudian slip.

"Ron, it's alright. I actually think that's rather sweet that you take him out to things," she said as she gave him a peck on the cheek in approval.

"Alright love birds, I need you guys to come over here so we can figure out our plan of action," Trepid said spoiling the moment.

The duo met him over at the canister and stood admiring the space-age polymer which was protecting the contents.

"So this is it?" Ron asked, "This is what Akuma's coming for?"

"Apparently," Trepid replied, running his hands down his shoulder straps.

"It seems so … anticlimactic."

"Laser drills rely on a series of mirrors and lenses to work properly," Ken explained. "Without them it might as well be just a giant flashlight. According to Wade, the contents of this container is a set of the most perfectly polished mirrors on the planet. So we need to do our best to make sure that they don't become collateral damage in this exercise. Or else you might be meeting the Ace of Blades a lot sooner than at the Robot Rumble."

"Hmmm, you know it's too bad we didn't just have another container that we could just pretend contained the components and use as a trap," Ron suggested.

"Yeah, that would be a good option, however this container was specially created to hold and protect these plates. It's as rare as the contents inside and probably cost a small fortune to build."

"It doesn't look like much though."

"Not on the surface, no. But the insulation has to be a special material, the box has to be airtight, and I'm willing to bet that in order to assemble it into the other components, you'd have to have a clean room to make sure it's installed properly before exposing it to the outside. Maybe if we had some more time and more money, but right now we're going to have to work with what we have."

"How do you know these things?"

"Let me guess, another dossier?" Kim replied to which Ken gave another wink.

"Bingo."

"So I guess that dossier of yours didn't happen to have a plan did it?" Kim asked.

"Welp, it would have helped if they didn't place it in a room that was ten stories above the ground, totally breachable by a ring of windows and placed among a ton of delicate instruments."

"Not to mention the whole, one way in and out thing," Ron added.

"True. But, on the other hand, we can probably use that to our advantage," Ken said rubbing his goatee in thought. "If we secure that entry way, we could create a bottleneck as he tries to enter."

"And how do you suggest we do that?"

"I brought some gel grenades in the duffle bag. My thought is that we strategically place the charges around the entrance, we can pin him down in various degrees of restraints. Then once he's subdued, maybe we can find out who's behind all of this."

Kim and Ron agreed and they went to work setting up their plan.

Hours had passed and the sun had set, replaced by a moon-filled night, its light creating a brilliant sheen of soft yellow across the windows of the Middleton Space Center. Inside the tower Kim sat backwards in a folding chair, her eyes glued to the double doors of the elevator while Agent Trepid paced diligently between the rows of control panels, deep in thought of what challenges would be before him and his crew. Their evacuation decoy had been deployed and their trap laid, so now they waited for Akuma to take the bait.

"So are your missions always this boring?" Kim asked her new teammate.

"I wish," he replied from behind a monitor. "I've got a feeling that won't last though."

Seeing an opportunity to pass the time, Kim leaned up from the chair and attempted to start a conversation with her replacement.

"So how do they stack up these days then? The missions."

"Depend on the situation," he replied while fiddling with some buttons, "the villains aren't as tongue-in-cheek as they were in your day, less goofy, more dangerous."

"Do you have any run-ins with the old bad guys?"

"Not exactly. Truth be told, most of your Rogue's Gallery called it quits years ago." he shrugged. Killigan finally came to the realization that golf course management was more lucrative than trying to turn Europe into a giant putting green, Frugal Lucre got out of prison and is now a bean counter for a non profit who specializes in reintroducing inmates to society, Senior Senior Junior is too busy working three jobs after his father died and the recession zapped all of his assets and Monkey Fist is now a hangout for birds in a park in Hunan, China. Then there was Drakken and Shego, and well you know how that turned out." he shrugged again.

"Oh," Kim said somewhat surprised.

"In all honesty, I think some just up and quit after you retired. In an odd sort of way, without you there to meddle in their plans, it just wasn't that fun being 'bad' anymore."

"You mean they actually enjoyed me stopping their capers?" Kim asked with astonishment.

"Take the Fearless Ferret and White Stripe or Batman and The Joker for example, "Trepid said casually, "Fictional characters of course, but they all had this strange love/hate relationship between the hero and antagonist where they somewhat completed each other, and without one the other one would be meaningless."

"That, doesn't really sound like most of those guys in all honesty," Kim objected, "Well, with the exception of Shego maybe. She had several opportunities to send me to an early grave but never followed through with it."

"Well that just proves my point. Universally people look to Shego as your true arch nemesis despite Drakken's lame attempts to be. And when she is missing, presumed dead, it's none other than Kim Possible coming out of retirement to find her." he said leaning while watching some buttons blink. "Hmm, wonder if that's important."

"I guess that's one way of looking at it," Kim conceded.

"Yeah, then there's the other reason." he sighed, still intrigued with the blinking buttons.

"Which is what?"

"The way that I may have been a tad rougher on them than you typically would be," he said with an exaggerated look of innocence.

"Define 'rougher'."

"Well, I may have taken a little more 'direct approach' with a few of them." He shrugged. "Broke Motor Ed's arm after he swung at my head with a tire iron, then I overwhelmed Camille Leon's morphing ability after I trapped her in a room with a few dozen video monitors."

"You WHAT?!" Kim replied bitterly.

"The good news is that the second nose eventually went away. Like I said, I was still adjusting to my new role. Then there was DNAmy with that whole … thingmagigmmermerm ..." he mumbled inaudibly.

"Come again?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ken sighed. "I may have killed her Rabbit-Rhino thing."

"Seriously?!

"Hey, it was 8 feet tall, with a horn and it came at me. What else was I supposed to do?"

"Step out of its way like you do with a charging moose or elephant?"

"I did..."

Kim looked on with a raised eyebrow.

"...Just so happened that I was standing next to a 300 foot cliff when I side stepped."

Kim pursed her lip in disapproval.

"So did you maime or seriously traumatize anyone else in my absence?"

"Nah, like I said, everyone else pretty much quit shortly after you did. Well, I take that back, Dementor … he didn't know when to quit," he chuckled. "He decided that instead of following suit with everyone else, he'd exploit the power vacuum and try to elevate himself to becoming the top villain in the world. But that didn't last long and after a few confrontations, Wade and I set him up with a nice post-crime career as a license plate stamper. Should have quit while he was ahead like the rest of them." he said going back to tapping the button.

"Satellite relay beacon." she said.

"Huh?"

"The button, it blinks when a satellite has relayed information to the space station. It's basically telling the astrophysicists 'they've got mail.'"

"Oh."

"Grew up around this place remember?" she winked.

"Good point." Trepid replied. "Back to our original conversation, the bulk of the missions nowadays are ones I would have done as a Global Justice agent. You know the type; stopping some terrorist, overzealous warlord, drug kingpin, or the occasional nutjob having a really bad day. It's not exactly dealing with mind control shampoo or mutant poodles."

"Lovely," she sighed in reservation.

"It's what I do baby, it's what I do," he replied with a half-efforted Fonzy pose.

Kim made a face of being unimpressed as Ken approached and sat in an office chair across from her.

"So besides traumatizing and maiming my old foes, what else is there to the mysterious Ken Trepid?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What's your story? What did you do prior to being a Global Justice agent? Where do you come from? Where did you learn how to be an agent? You know, all that good origins stuff everyone is into these days."

Ken put his arms nonchalantly behind his head and leaned back in his chair as if to be in thought. "Classified, not saying, classified, and um … oh yeah, classified." He smirked.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Here you are, knowing everything about me through your 'dossiers' but when it comes to you, nothing?"

"It doesn't work that way, Kim," he replied. "In regards to knowing everything about you, well … it's not like you've kept a low profile over the years. You are one of those rare individuals in the world of crime fighting that basked in the limelight whereas me and everyone else prefer to keep a low profile. I found it makes it easier to go undercover when your face isn't plastered on the front of a magazine in the checkout lane."

"True, but then again I hardly ever went undercover in my early days."

"Back before you got popular and recognizable, which makes it almost impossible for you to go anywhere without being recognized … no pun intended," Ken replied. "But that's fine, undercover isn't exactly what we're doing here."

"Do you go undercover often? Or is that classified too?" Kim asked with a slight eyeroll.

"I might." he said trying to be mysterious.

"Does that explain that ink job you have there?" she said pointing to his shoulder.

Ken's smirk dropped slightly as he refused to answer and tried to cover up his arm with his hand.

"Don't be coy with me, Trepid, I've studied enough law and history to know a Waffen-SS symbol when I see one. Seeing how good you and Wade are together, I can't see you exactly subscribing to the ideology of white supremacy, so what's the story behind that?"

Ken sighed and rolled up his sleeve, exposing the large black "SS" logo of the elite squadron of Nazi Germany along with several other smaller designs.

"Late in 2008, Global Justice received a credible tip that a group of Aryan Brotherhood members were planning to attack a target on the West Coast."

"And you volunteered to go undercover and infiltrate the group?"

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it 'volunteered,' but yeah. Being one of Global Justice's top agents, Betty assigned me to the task."

"And she made you get inked?"

"Not exactly," he said rolling his sleeve back down. "Global Justice kind of runs on the premise that its agents are left to decide how best to perform their mission objectives, we found that it worked better to let agents rely on their instincts which lead to their recruitments over some egghead's thoughts on the matter. Especially after said eggheads came to the brilliant conclusion that your pet molerat was the key to all of your success and not say, your teamwork, attitudes and intuition. A lot of the agents lost a lot of faith in them after that exchange." he shrugged.

"But yes, to answer your question the tattoos were my idea."

"Why would you do that?" she asked.

"I'm sure you've seen pictures of Aryan Brotherhood members in your case studies. If you tried joining up and you didn't at least have one tattoo dedicated to 'the cause' you'd raise a lot of red flags. I might as well have just worn a giant sticker on my shirt that said 'informant'. No, to join you had to show your commitment, so I did what I had to in order to be accepted. After months of following leads and shady backdoor meetings I finally found those who were carrying out the plot. I was on my own, deep undercover with no correspondence with HQ, with only my wits to make sure they didn't carry through with their plans."

"Anyways, I managed to infiltrate their group. After doing a lot of things that I'm not proud of nor will repeat here, I was able to discover the plot and ultimately worked my way onto the team who was to carry it out."

"What was the target?" Kim asked.

"The target was the West Coast Student Shabbaton Conference which was being held in Sacramento. We had cased the venue, figured out where the weakest parts of the structure were, exit patterns, and what places and situations would create the most casualties. We had more ammonium nitrate than the state of Nebraska by the time we were ready."

"Oh my gosh," Kim said, taken back, "how close did they get to pulling it off?"

"The objective was to get them as close as possible to pulling off the attack. The more evidence we had piled up against them, the more we could put everyone away for a long, long time."

"And how close was that?" she said leaning in, becoming more interested in the story.

"I thwarted it as we were en route to the convention center. I had sabotaged the detonators and changed the chemical composition of the fuel the night before and then placed an anonymous tip to the local sheriff's department." he continued. "And as planned, when we got within the vicinity of the conference we were met by an army of SWAT teams which then resulted in us escaping the scene which may have caused a lot of collateral damage to the surrounding area." he said with a slight eyeroll. "Box trucks aren't exactly known for their maneuverability qualities you know."

"Eventually we were neutralized, apprehended and booked. Well, my accomplices were. Doc extracted me discretely following a rough interrogation session. That was just before we got the news that Global Justice was shutting down."

"And yet you kept the tattoos?"

"My cover is still good. And as far as my co-conspirators know, they think I was extradited to New Jersey over outstanding warrants. If there was any other plot to have come up, I would have been able to go back in without suspicion."

"And you're fine with that?"

"Well, it makes it difficult wearing short sleeves in public, but in the end I suppose it was worth it. There's a lot of college-age Jewish kids alive today because of what I did." he said. "Like I said, we're expected to do what we have to in order to keep people safe. It's the sacrifice we make as Global Justice agents, you know, to serve something bigger than yourself."

"I see."

"Yeah, so it's a little more involved than that cutie mark you've got going on your wrist." he winked as he rolled his sleeve back down, "Let me guess, got it in Florida while not of sound or sober mind right?" he smirked.

Kim rolled her eyes at the jab and turned to look outside the windows. It was then, Ken noticed that her scowl began to drop from her face and replaced with a more pale, frightened look.

"Hey, I was only kidding about the sober thing."

"I-its not that," she said, her voice slightly trembling. "Ron, he … he was at that conference in Sacramento," she finally got out with a shaky voice. "He went down there with a few of his friends from Temple."

"Oh … Well then I guess you're welcome," Ken awkwardly answered as he stood back up and stretched. "I'd appreciate if you kept this conversation between us. I don't need your boyfriend thinking that I'm holding an 'I saved your life' card over his head. Those tend to become distractions I've learned."

"Right...yes, of course," Kim said, still shaken up with the revelation that she came close to losing her best friend.

"And speaking of which, where is your boyfriend at?"

"He went to the bathroom," she said looking at the watch on her glove, "40 minutes ago."

"Kimberly Ann Possible, you are the love of my life, the yin to my yang, the sauce to my naco, the entire reason that I am alive. To not have you in my life would be like a bird unable to fly, or a fish unable to swim. You complete me in every way possible, so to speak. And because of that, I can't see how I can go through this life without you by my side. To be my partner to be my steadfast beacon of light which I draw my lifesource from, to ..."

"No," Rufus chirped as he vehemently shook his head in disapproval from the edge of the bathroom sink.

"No? What do you mean 'No'?" Ron demanded, kneeling down. "I didn't even get to the question."

"Too mushy," The molerat chirped again.

"Too mushy? This is a proposal Rufus, it's supposed to be romantic and mushy."

"Eh, not you," The molerat explained.

"Not me? What do you want me to do? Hey KP, wanna get hitched?" Ron asked.

"Uh no." Rufus nodded, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Dearest Kimberly, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife and partner for the rest of our lives."

"Blah blah blah," Rufus said, mocking the man next to him.

"Well what would you suggest?" Ron groaned as he rose from bended knee off the bathroom floor. "We've been at this for over half an hour. KP's going to start to think I stroked out on the toilet or something."

"Hmm… be you," the rodent suggested.

"Excuse me?"

"Y'know, yourself."

"This is me!" Ron said with exasperation.

"Nuh uh, phoney!" he said as he mockingly pretended to be Ron in an over-romantic parody.

"Fine…" he huffed "I'll do it one more time, your way."

"Good," Rufus chirped with a nod.

Ron begrudgingly went back down to his knee again and continued to pretend his pet was his girlfriend.

"You know I was planning on doing this right after we wrapped this mission up right? By the time we get the whole proposal figured out, she and Trepid are already going to have captured Akuma and rescued Shego." Ron cleared his throat, closed his eyes and regained his composure before proceeding.

"Kimberly Ann Possible, ever since I met you back in preschool, I knew deep down in my heart that we had something special between us. And that feeling has continued to grow and grow throughout the years as we've gotten older and closer to each other. And although the last few years have been a little rocky, our love for each other has overcome all of the obstacles life has thrown at us and, and .. and …"

A large explosion interrupted him, rocking the entire control center and made Ron lose his balance, dropping him to the bathroom floor.

In the control room, Kim and Ken had also felt the blast and had both dove to the floor for safety.

"What the heck was that?!" Kim asked as she peeked up from behind the office chair.

Ken, popped up from behind the control panels and cautiously approached the windows of the control center from where he could see a pillar of black smoke rise.

"That, was our ride," he said with a sigh.

Kim stood up and made her way over to Ken where she could see the silhouette of the jet mangled and engulfed in flames.

"Hey, KP I thought I heard an explosion, you guys alright?" Ron said, running back into the main room from the restroom and seeing the damage.

Kim turned towards her boyfriend just as she caught the movement of an object heading rapidly towards him from outside.

"RON, GET DOWN!" she yelled dashing towards him and then pulling him to the floor just as a flaming object crashed through the window above them.

After a few seconds, Kim lifted herself up to inspect her boyfriend.

"You alright?" she asked concerned.

"Absolutely, KP," he replied with a smirk, always enjoying the opportunity to have her on top of him.

Kim rolled her eyes at the obvious ploy and pulled him up from the ground, brushing off shards of glass off both of their bodies.

"What was that?"

"That, would be Vivian's robot," Ken said standing over the crushed, smoldering heap. "He's here."

"Akuma?"

"Either that or Viv seriously needs to work on her robotics skills," he mumbled hastily while a second explosion was heard outside. "Kim, I need you to arm the charges, on the right side of each casing is a little black switch, click that switch up and a green light will come on signaling it's armed."

"On it." Kim confirmed, turning to begin her work.

"Ron, I need you to go into that duffel bag you brought in and find the little black and yellow box that's in there and bring it to me.

Ron obliged and after checking his pocket to make sure his ring was still secure, he rummaged through the duffel bag until he came across the box which Ken had described.

"What is this?" he asked bringing it to the senior agent.

"Detonator," he replied opening the case and exposing a small device which resembled a flash drive. "How are we doing on those charges Possible?"

"On the last one," she shouted from the doors. "There, that should do it!"

"Good, now get back here."

Kim ran back over to behind some control panels where Ron and Ken were to receive their next instructions. Ken then asked to see Kim's hand, to which he proceeded to attach the detonator to a port located on her glove, pressed a few buttons to sync the two devices together which then resulted in a little flashing red button to emerge above the casing.

"Alright, Kim, you're going to be responsible for springing the trap," he instructed. "When that smug hairball walks through those elevator doors, I'll give you the signal and you push this button and trigger the first set of charges. The way we have them set up will shoot large gel globs at him from various angles hopefully pinning at least one of his limbs to the ground. Once those go off, count to five and then press the button again, setting off the next wave of charges. Those are more directed to where his body should be and theoretically should stop him in his tracks.

"And if that doesn't stop him?"

"Stoppable and I will run defense for you in the event he gets through the gel grenades. I'm a seasoned combat veteran and he's got those magic monkey powers so we'll be good if push comes to shove.

"Yeah, um … those powers. I haven't really figured out how to make them work after the last time I used them. I think they may have been a one-off."

"Well In that case I hope you still know those 16 styles of Kung Fu you liked to brag about," he said looking at Kim.

"That doesn't seem like much of a plan." Kim shrugged.

"Just be sure you hit those charges when I tell you to. The gelling compound was originally developed as an emergency stopper for use on aircraft carriers. If it can keep a fighter jet from falling off a flight deck, it should be able to stop Akuma in his tracks.

While the trio were finalizing their plans, the elevator began to bing and signaling that the car was making its ascension to the tower.

"Um, guys, I think he's coming up!" Ron said nervously.

"Alright, game time people. Obviously with the jet he knows someone's here, so we've lost the element of surprise, and if he's coming up he might come out either blazing or with a full head of steam. So be ready for anything!"

As discussed, Ken and Ron took their positions on each side of the laid trap while Kim intently stood with her finger on the button attached to her wrist. The whirling sound of the lift engine began to slow and then came to a complete stop.

The moment of truth was here.

"Ready," Trepid mouthed to both of his teammates while a bing was heard and the doors began to slide open. Kim kept her eyes focused on the opening, ready to strike the instant she was given the order. Several seconds passed and still no one came through into the room.

"Is there anyone even on the lift?" Ron whispered over his comm link.

"I'm not sure. Stay alert though in the event this is a diversion," Trepid whispered back.

"Wait, something's happening," Kim added.

What Kim saw was plumes of purple smoke begin to travel from out of the opening.

"Well aren't we clever," Trepid remarked, "He's in there and must be trying to provide himself with a cover. He knows he's walking into a trap."

A few seconds later, some movement could be seen from inside the cabin and a figure began to make its way out of the elevator.

"Get ready," Trepid spoke again over his comm link as a dark figure began to appear through the fog and apparently limping.

"Um, is it just me or does that figure looks a lot smaller than what you were making Akuma out to be?" Ron asked Trepid.

"Yeah, you're right, crap. Stand down Kim."

"Huh?"

"Akuma's got a hostage, stand down!"

Indeed the situation became much more complicated when a much smaller individual, bound by rope from the knees to the elbows and wearing a black hood, escorted Akuma into the room, his hands firmly planted across the hostage's shoulders.

All three of them were taken back by Akuma's massive presence. Like Kim and Ron, Ken had never seen him in the flesh and only through security camera footage, none of which gave his true appearance justice. He stood well over seven feet tall and as he hunched slightly over and placed his massive hands on each side of his hostage he dwarfed them in comparison. His pale skin was almost white in the light of the room while shadows highlighted his muscles and scars in a hue of blue. A long black mane of hair flowed down his back while a large, jagged beard ran across his square jaw. Several piercings adorned his pointed ears and the red glow from his blank eyes reflected through the studs. For clothing, he donned a unique outfit which appeared to be a cross of tactical gear and biker clothes, all custom made for his massive frame.

"Get out of my way you germs," he finally boomed.

"Not happening, Pal," Trepid said obstructing his path.

Akuma laughed at the threat and pulled his hostage into his chest and snickered. "If you haven't noticed, I'm the one here holding all the cards. Unless you'd like this prisoner's death on your hands."

"Ken, are you sure you know what you're doing?" Kim questioned her teammate nervously.

Ken ignored her calls of concern and stood his ground, his eyes seared into the glowing eyes of his adversary.

"I can't let you do that Akuma," Trepid said sternly, confronting him. "I know why you're here and no, you're not leaving with those mirrors. We've made sure of that."

The hulking figure snickered at the threat. "Ha! Looks like we have a hero on our hands. And you know what they say about what a hero is right? A person who gets others killed."

"Did he just quote Firefly?" Ron asked.

"Not now Ron…" Kim groaned.

Akuma tilted his head towards Stoppable and began to grin a sly grin.

"Wait...so there's three of you. A hero, a ginger and a buffoon. This is absurd!" he cackled.

Kim took offense to the ginger remark and suddenly regained her nerve and approached where Trepid was standing.

"As the man said, you're not leaving with those mirrors!"

"Kim, what are you doing? Get back to your position.." Ken mumbled

"Yeah!" Ron echoed as he also approached where his teammates were standing, punching his fists. "Not gonna happen big guy!"

"You guys are going to screw this up...get your asses back to your places!"

"So let me get this straight," Akuma started, holding back his laughs, "You three have some stones between your legs. You ain't no security guards so who exactly are you?"

"The name's Agent K-"

"His name is Ken Trepid," another voice interrupted from behind Akuma, "Agent Ken Trepid of Global Justice...well, I suppose I should say formerly of Global Justice. The agency isn't necessarily a thing these days sadly."

"That voice," Kim said squinting to see through the smoke, "I swear I know that voice..."

"As for the other two, they're Kim Possible and her sidekick-slash-boyfriend…um, Dan...Don.."

"Ron…" Ron supplied helpfully.

"Right, Ron Stoppable...a couple of amateur freelancers masquerading as crimefighters."

"Amateurs?"

"Wait, there is only one person who would call what I do amateur," Kim exclaimed. "And that's…that's...Will Du?!"

A slow clap was heard coming from behind Akuma where the voice had originated. Then a dark outline of a figure could be seen as it walked methodically from behind Akuma and his hostage.

It was indeed Will Du, albeit a much darker version than the last time he had crossed paths with Kim and Ron.

"You've got to be kidding me." Trepid snarled.

"Agent Will Du? You're behind all of this?" Kim exclaimed in shock.

"Tah dah." He exclaimed sarcastically, wiping his now long hair off of his stubbled face and smiled at the redhead while engaging in a mock curtsey.

"More like former agent," Trepid remarked.

"What? Did he get laid off too?" Ron asked.

"Not exactly. Du here decided to take advantage of being the top agent at Global Justice and ran a little extortion racket on the side. Eventually the agency got wind of it and Betty had him discharged.

"Seriously? Who caught him?"

"Me." Trepid replied, his vision still fixed on his predecessor.

"Eighteen years...eighteen years of hard work, dedication and personal sacrifice all undone by this paragon of virtue. And it was then all taken away from me!"

"You were crooked Du. You've got nobody to blame but yourself for getting canned."

"Oh no, you're correct. We all are responsible for our own decisions. I should really thank you for turning me in if you want me to be completely honest with you. After I was fired, I retreated to the Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa to sulk and to reflect on my life. Frankly the experience was enlightening. All of a sudden my eyes were open for the first time in ages to the world around me."

"Great, he's starting to monologue," Trepid moaned. "How about you just fast forward to the part where you tell us what kind of cockamamey plan you have for the laser drill before I kick your ass back to South Africa so you can reflect on your life some more?"

"Oh please Kenneth, what do you take me for? Some sort of Bond villain? You and I both know that any sort of arrogant speak that divulges a plan or a plot is almost inevitably foiled because of it. No, what I am going to do instead is tell you one last time is to get you and your comrades out of our way. That is unless you all wish to join your blue friend laying up on the morgue."

"I'm not Drakken," Kim spoke up in defiance. "Whatever you think you have planned, you'll lose."

Du gave an arrogant smirk to that threat and began to calmly pace back and forth in front of the group. "Foolish girl. This is the last piece of a puzzle which we have went through a lot of trouble and bodies to put together. It just happened to be housed at a laboratory in Middleton, Oregon; a laboratory which happens to be where your father is employed. Did you think that we would be so shortsighted to not think that you and your boyfriend wouldn't have gotten mixed up into this little project somehow? Especially seeing how my predecessor and his portly friend is, how should we say, 'shorthanded' at the moment?'"

"Huh? How would you know that?" Kim asked.

Du scoffed at the question and snapped his fingers which signaled Akuma to approach him with the hostage. "Let's just call it a hunch." he said yanking off the hood and revealing the identity of the person underneath.

It was Bonnie.

Her hair was disheveled, a streak of blood had dried down the side of her cheek from a busted lip and her arms and hands were beginning to bruise from the hefty amount of rope which wrapped around her body. On her shoulders rested the giant grey hands of Akuma who escorted her into the control center, and past the set devices.

"Bonnie?" Ken said.

"Bonnie!?" Kim echoed, "What's she doing here?"

"Kim? What are you doing here?" she responded with an angry groan.

"Long story Stoney," Ken replied.

"Stoney?" Kim asked.

"Long Story Kim."

"Ah yes, I have to tell you it's quite fascinating what you can find on the back country roads of rural Idaho this time of year," Du said while arrogantly caressing Bonnie's face, "The occasional bison grazing along the shoulder, a herd of antelope galloping across the prairie...the unsuspecting coed whose Jeep was unexpectedly forced off the road before rolling several times down an embankment."

"Yeah and my father had just bought me that Jeep last April you asshole!" Bonnie scolded in defiance.

Du took his hand which had been traveling across her bruised chin and made its way up to Bonnie's mane where he promptly grabbed a fistfull of her long brown hair and yanked her head back in a sudden motion. "Speak to me like that again, and I will slit your throat from ear to ear right here in front of all of your friends." Du warned.

"You can't do that to Bonnie!" Ron shouted.

"Oh I can...and I will if I have to. However I would prefer not to as the whole reason she is here is to act as an agent of civility."

"Whuh?"

"It's quite simple really," Du explained to Ron. "You see, this little wench is valuable to you as the mirrors behind you are to me. So we are going engage in a little exchange. The Deep Venture's set of mirrors for her life."

"I can't do that." Trepid answered reluctantly.

"Um, are you sure about that 'Trep?" Bonnie asked, growing concerned with where his train of thought was going.

"You're not getting the mirrors. If you think you will, it'll be through us."

Du sighed in resignation over the agent's answer. "Well that's unfortunate you think that way, it truly is, for your sake, and for her's, especially her's." he said as he motioned to Akuma who lifted Bonnie up with one hand and began to walk to Du's left.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Kim demanded.

"In football it's called an audible, in negotiations it's called it following through on your threat." he said. "We came here in anticipation that an exchange of some measly parts for the life of a fellow human being would have occurred. But apparently you think we're bluffing about doing any sort of bodily harm to young, sweet Miss Bonnie here. So now it's time to show you that we're not fooling around. Now Akuma, if you would please now do what we talked about on the way here."

"You got it boss." he snarled as he walked Bonnie towards the windows.

"Don't do it Du…" Ken warned increasingly getting into an attack stance.

"Obviously you don't take my threats seriously, nor do you value the life of your friend, so why don't we just take her out of the conversation all together?"

"Trepid...I'm getting a little wigged out here.." Bonnie said in a shaky voice helpless to do anything.

"If anything happens to her Du I swear…."

"You'll do what exactly? Whip up on me and my Lowardian-hybrid? Akuma, please continue."

"I guess that confirms where he got the big guy from." Ron commented.

Akuma obliged and walked over to the windows which had been shattered when Vivian's robot flew threw them and proceeded to hang Bonnie out of it, high above the ground.

"Last chance to lose the hero mantra and do the right thing Trepid...or do you still value inanimate objects over someone's life? Regardless of how shallow, trivial and materialistic that life might be."

"Hey!" Bonnie said, taking offense.

"You're not getting the mirrors Du." Trepid said again in conflicted defiance. Several tense silent seconds passed as the opposing sides exchanged hard glares at one another, looking to see who would make the next move.

"Alright then." Du sighed as gestured to Akuma to release Bonnie.

Akuma obliged and opened up his palm as the brunette plummeted towards the ground ten stories below while giving off a blood curdling scream.

"BONNIE!" Ron screamed in horror.

"NO!" Kim yelled.

"Shit," Ken mumbled to himself as he broke position and ran towards the windows, dodging a swipe from Akuma and diving out head first after her.

"Okay well that evens up the score a bit, Akuma if you would be so kind as to execute the next part of our plan." Du ordered.

Akuma pulled a small device out of his pocket which contained a small screen and several buttons. He pushed a large green button which triggered heavy metal plates to come down over the windows locking the four of them inside the room.

"First rule of building a space center with a close proximity to a launch pad, be sure to have blast doors installed. I do believe that went a lot easier than I had expected it to go, do you not agree Akuma?"

"Almost too easy." the giant scoffed.

"You! You never had any intentions of letting Bonnie go." accused Kim, "This whole hostage angle was just a ruse to separate us from Trepid."

"Excellent deductive reasoning Kimberly," Du mocked with a simple hand clap. "Say what you will about the man, but Agent Trepid is a very dangerous individual and formidable opponent. It's too bad his 'ready, fire aim' mentality has always been his Achilles heel."

"You two on the other hand, if I understand correctly haven't seen a mission in well over two years, a fact those little paunches the two of you are sporting appear to confirm that suspicion.  
So now that our mutual acquaintance is no longer in the equation, there are two scenarios at play here: The first of which is that in order for me and my friend here to get those mirrors we came for, we have to go through you two; the second one is that in order for you two to leave this control room alive...you have to go through us."

"Which one of those two scenarios seem to have the most realistic outcome Miss Possible? The man with 18 years of combat training under his belt whose partner happens to have the blood of the most violent, warfaring race in the galaxy flowing through his veins, or the recovering lush and her dimwitted boyfriend who haven't seen action outside of their dorm room since their freshman year of college?"

Kim's heart was racing, she knew that both she and Ron were outmatched but she also knew she had to stand her ground and prevent Du from obtaining the final piece of the drill. With a lump in her throat, she retook her fighting stance and clenched her fists in defiance. "If you want these mirrors, you're going to have to go through us!"

Du shrugged his shoulders and sighed, "Suit yourselves; Akuma if you would be so kind to do what I pay you for now I would appreciate it."

Akuma walked away from the window, cracked his knuckles and stretched his neck before setting his sights on Kim's position and charging at her full boar.

"GOTCHA!" Trepid screamed as the tension from his grappling hook took hold and stopped Bonnie's fall a mere five feet from the pavement below.

"I...I...I think I'm going to be sick." she whimpered.

Ken slowly released more tension from his line and gently descended to the ground where he promptly took out a laser cutter and began to sever her bonds.

"You alright Stoney?" he asked her finally cutting through the last chord and freeing her.

"Let's see, I'm a little roughed up from the crash, my arms are sore from being tied up for the last twelve hours, and I think I need to change my underwear after being tossed out a window, but other than that, I'm peachy-fucking-keen!"

"You'll have to tell me about what happened later, but right now we need to get back in that control room. Kim and Ron are up against two guys they aren't equipped to handle."

"Um, I think that might be a problem," Bonnie said pointing back up at the tower and the metal curtain which now covered the windows, "I think the facility might have just gone into lockdown."

"Blast doors?! Who puts blast doors on a control tower?" He groaned.

"Oh I don't know Ken, someone who deals with blasting things into space all the time?"

"Now's not the time for smartassery," he scolded while trying to get his communicator to work. "Wade, you there?"

"What's up Trep? I lost your signal for some reason." Wade said as he signed on, sipping on a soda, "How's the operation going?"

"Sideways. Will Du is the mastermind behind all of this."

"Will Du?"

"Apparently he's gone rogue and has been the one giving Akuma orders."

"What would he want with a laser drill?"

"I don't know, but what I do know is that he took Stoney as a hostage and used her to separate me from Kim and Ron. And now they're locked into the control tower with him and Akuma while the two of us are on the ground, unable to get in."

"I guess that explains why Bonnie never answered her communicator when I tried to get in touch with her."

"Yeah well, that and I turned it off. Spring Break remember?" she grumbled.

"Dually noted Bonnie. What do you mean by locked out Trep?"

"Locked out as in there are big friggin metal shutters covering all of the windows to the place and we can't get back inside."

"That...must be new, I didn't see any lockdown system on the station's schematics." he said confused.

"Well, they're here now Wade! I don't have time, we need a way back in. Can you log into the system's computers and see what you can find?"

"Sure thing, give me just a sec." Wade said, frantically typing away at his keyboard. "Oh, so there are blast doors."

"Tell me something we don't know Wade…"

"Okay, okay...According to my data, all main windows and entrances to the center are locked out and the elevator to and from the control tower is non-operational. However, there seems to be an air vent just to the right of the main entrance which you could use to enter the facility.

Looking at the plans, the ventilation system can take you to fairly close to where the elevator shaft is located. Once you get there, access the shaft and use your grappling hooks to go up the tower, but you'll have to find a way into the elevator cabin to get back to the control room.

"How long do you think that would take?"

"By the looks of it, you'll have to cut through at least three ventilation grates and find a way around a large metal fan before you can make it to the elevator shaft. Conservatively using your laser cutter probably thirty minutes?"

"That's 29 minutes too many."

"Well then I guess, if you happen to have packed some of your proximity mines, you might be able to shave off some more time using the 'more direct' approach.

Ken quickly looked into his utility belt and saw a pair of discs situated in one of the pockets. "I've got two...I'll figure out how to get through the third when I get to it."

"Do that and I'll try to patch my way into the space center's servers and see if I can get it out of lockdown. You two be careful."

"Got it." Ken said signing off and then turning to Bonnie who had overheard the conversation and nodded in agreement.

"Ron you alright?" A winded Kim asked her boyfriend.

"Yeah, KP...this Akuma guy, he's freaking fast on his f-"

"INCOMING!" she screamed as both dove out of the way of another powerful charge by Akuma which saw him plow through a series of control panels.

"Well there goes any future space missions." Ron huffed.

*Kim, Ron..this is Trepid, do you read me?* Ken spoke over their radios.

"Little busy dodging a hulking monster Trep, what is it?"

"First off Bonnie's safe, so don't worry about her. Second is that we're going to try to get back into the building, which might be tricky with everything locked down."

"Yeah, Akuma has some sort of device he hacked into the system with."

"Wade's trying to hack into it. It might take some time but I'm coming back to you. Try to stall Du and Akuma as much as you can until I can get there. And whatever you do, don't let him take the mirrors!"

"Yeah, so not the drama Ken." she remarked dodging another swipe, "We'll hold him down until you get here."

"Ron we have to split up. We can't go after this guy side-by-side. We have to attack him from different angles to have a chance."

"A chance at what?"

"A chance to see if we can hold him off until Trepid finds a way back into the building,"

"If he finds a way back into the building...and how does he know Bonnie? He asked confused.

"Not sure, we'll have to ask him. In the meantime, MOVE!" she yelled while another massive fist came slamming down close to the pair with them rolling out of the way just in time.

"Here's an idea: Stay on the ground and try to keep him distracted and I'll take the grappling hook and see if I can do anything from the air." Kim said running across the room.

While Kim was thinking out her plan, Ron caught a glimpse of some movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Du's making a run for the mirrors KP!" he exclaimed.

Kim turned her head and saw as well.

"Ron, go stop him. I'll take care of the big guy."

"Kim that's crazy!" he protested "You'll get killed!"

"Ron, do it! He can't get away with the mirrors!"

"But Akuma..."

"Where's Rufus at? She asked.

"In my pocket."

"Give him to me."

Ron consented and pulled Rufus out of his pocket and handed him to his girlfriend.

"Now go stop Du, Rufus and I will try to keep Akuma distracted."

Ron nodded and ran after Du while Kim again barely dodged another swing of Akuma's giant arms.

"KP!"

"Go, Ron! Now!"

While Kim and Ron battled inside the control tower, Ken and Bonnie were hard at work down on the ground floor, desperately trying to regain access into the space center.

They had managed to force their way into the ventilation system Wade had pointed them to and were quickly confronted with the first metal security grate. Ken instructed Bonnie to remain around a corner while he attached one of his proximity mines to the edge of the grate. He was careful in his placement of the mine so the blast would only warp or weaken the grate without broader damage. Due to the various compartmental lockdowns throughout the facility, the ventilation shaft was the quickest and most direct way to the elevator, so any damage to the structure of the shaft would result in lost time.

Once the mine was set, he armed the device and quickly shimmied back to Bonnie's position. He threw a quarter at it and got on top of Bonnie to protect her from the ensuing blast and as the quarter rolled within the proximity of the mine, the device detonated. The explosion was quick and as planned, warped the grate enough that Ken was able to kick it in enough so that the two of them could crawl through its opening. They continued down the shaft and soon came to the second security grate. Ken once again placed his last proximity mine on the corner of the grate and repeated what he had done with the first, except this time the blast managed to blow the grate off completely, and leaving it on the ground in a twisted heap.

"Well that's two down, one more to go and we're out of mines." Bonnie said waving through the residual smoke. "Got any ideas on how to get past the last grate?"

"I've got one," he said bending over and picking up the mangled remains of the grate. "We have a laser cutter which should be able to cut through the sections of the grate, barring its the same type as the last two. Since time is something we don't have, we'll cut through a few sections and then ram this bent piece in the hole and try to pry it apart.

Bonnie nodded in agreement and the two hurried again through the shaft and reaching the third and final grate. Ken took out the laser cutter, and turned it up to its highest setting before starting to cut through the iron bars. Slowly but surely the bars began to glow a bright orange and a small slit began to form through the bars. Minutes later he was through, then he went to work on the next bar, and the next, and the next, until he had cut through what he thought was enough for his plan to work. He next laid down on the floor and began to kick at the cut section of the grate, inch by inch, the metal began to bend from the impacts and soon enough of it had been pushed back to the point he could insert the piece of the other grate into the hole. Bonnie joined him and helped pull against the bars until they had managed to pry out a small opening.

"Do you think you can fit through that?" He asked Bonnie.

"I think so," she said as she turned herself sideways and tried to shimmy through the small, tight opening. "I'm through, but can you fit through it?"

"Not yet," he said picking up the fulcrum and began to slam it into the warped section several times. "There, now I can."

With the mangled bars still in his hand, he and Bonnie hurried down the shaft until they arrived at the giant metal exhaust fan which was busy spinning around.

"There's always a moving fan…" she sighed.

"Wade, what are the chances you've hacked into the system and can kill the airflow in this duct?"

"No can do Trep, I'm still trying to hack into this system."

"So I guess we're going to have to do this the old fashioned way, stand back Stoney, this might kick back."

Ken took the old mangled piece of grate from earlier and followed with his eyes one of the three giant fan blades. He began to time a single blade and how long it took to cross paths with a straight brace which mounted the fan to the shaft. "One, two," he counted on his breath, "THREE!" and shoved the bar next to the brace and stopping the blade in its path. The fan's engined whirred in a painful sound as it tried to break through the stoppage.

"Is that safe to go through?" Bonnie asked.

"Nope, so you better dive and do it fast!"

"Fine, she said taking a few steps back and entered a starting pose reminiscent of a gymnastics routine, she then took off, did a quick flip and slid with ease through the fan's opening and popped back up on the other side.

"Your turn." She mocked with her hands out as if she had just finished a floor routine.

Trepid furled his brow watching the fan blades continue to quiver as they tried to free themselves from the barrier. "Here goes nothing," he said to himself while he crawled through the tight space. He wiggled his head through, then his chest, and then his torso which he thought he was through when all of a sudden, the bar became dislodged and the fan was able to begin to spin freely again, catching Trepid in the waist and pinning him against a side brace.

"Shit!" he screamed, half in anger and half in pain.

"Oh no, Ken are you ok?" Bonnie asked.

"No...this hurts.." he squeaked. The blade's stuck on my belt, so it's not cutting into me...but this really hurts."

"W-what do you want me to do?!"

"Take the laser cutter and aim it into the fan's housing. Fry...the...motor!"

Bonnie took the laser and quickly went to work trying to disable the fan's inner workings. After several tense minutes sparks began to fly and the fan was finally offline and with it the pressure of the blade on Ken's body. He quickly shoved the blade off and crawled in pain next to the brunette.

"Thanks."

"You alright?"

"Yeah, just a little pinch...I'll make it."

"You're welcome."

"Hey...I was getting to that," he gasped. "Let me get some feeling back in my legs."

"So now what?"

Ken stood back up and took a few deep breaths, "Let's find out. Wade, you there?"

"Still here Trepid, what's your status?"

"We made it through the grates and the fan, now what?"

"Okay according to the schematics, there should be an air duct grate about ten yards away from your location. It will be on your right and exits out into the main concourse just outside of the propulsion lab. It's probably only secured with a couple of screws, so a good kick should be all it takes. Once you're into the concourse, the elevator should just be a short distance from you."

"Got it Wade, we'll let you know when we're there."

"Going somewhere Will Du?" Ron said slyly from behind the rogue agent.

"Mr. Stoppable, are we really going to do this?"

"Um, Yeah. You're not getting those mirrors."

"As you and your counterpart have implied several times already to the point of redundancy.." He said turning and approaching Ron. "You do realize what you are inviting onto yourself, yes?

"Do you?"

"What? A washed up sidekick who's given up a crime fighting hobby in exchange for a chef's hat?" He scoffed. "Against a seasoned soldier trained in so many forms of Kung Fu that it reads like a list from the Audobon Society, so what exactly do you think the outcome of this confrontation is going to be other than your ultimate demise?"

"I think that you being a Kung Fu snob has made you forget that I, Ron Stoppable was the one who trained at the Yamanouchi Ninja School, possessed the Mythical Monkey Power AND welded the Lotus Blade…"

"Of which you merely attended a semester of, hardly enough to make you a master of anything; and if I recall you've lost your Mythical Monkey Powers AND lost the Lotus Blade to the power known as 'gravity.' Rendering you nothing more than than another martial arts wannabe who can break boards with his hands."

"Hey, I went back...for a few weeks...a few years back." Ron defended himself.

"Then stopping me from taking these mirrors should be a breeze then," he said cracking his neck and entering a strike position. "Prepare yourself for your end!"

Ron dropped his eyes and focused his gaze on his opponent. He assumed his own strike position which Yori had taught him and braced for Du's attack. Will came at him with several tiger strikes which Ron successfully defended and then returned the favor with his own set of blows which Du also was able to block.

"Impressive," Du admitted. Your vacation seems to have amassed the basic groundwork for Kung Fu. Now lets see what you can do with an advanced skillset."

Unimpressed, Ron motioned his adversary to bring said skillset to light. Which Du obliged, this time utilizing a series of high kicks, to which again Ron was able to repel with his own knifehand blocks and connecting with a counter sweep which sent Du to the floor, only to spring right back up.

"Still impressed?" Ron said with a rush of adrenaline flow through his body as he began to recall his Yamanouchi training.

"So you can block, congratulations...you're a green belt at a Tiny Tigers."

"Says the guy this 'Tiny Tiger' just knocked on his keister!"

"Lucky shot, nothing more."

Du came at him again with a series of punches and knee strikes, and again Ron managed to block all of them with increased ease. After two more sets of attacks, Ron began to realize that the strikes that Du was landing on his body didn't particularly hurt or sting like the hits Yori laid on him in sparring sessions. This had to mean one of two things: Either Ron was a lot tougher and stronger in martial arts than he thought he was, or that Will Du wasn't as tough and experienced as he was making himself out to be. He dodged another round of kicks and again and decided to test his theory on the next wave of attacks by intentionally letting his guard down. That next round came swiftly with a series of punches to Ron's midsection.

Ron was right.

Du was landing either landing weak strikes or Ron was substantially better than he thought he was.

Despite the slew of punches, Ron simply backed up while a smirk came across his face.

"What's so funny?" Du questioned as he threw another punch at Ron's midsection, to which he grabbed his opponent's arm and threw him over his shoulder. Du picked himself up stunned at the counter.

Ron let out a smirk and scowled, "What? Is the Grand Master of Audubon Society Kung Fu unable see a Stone Monkey technique when he sees one?"

Du was both humiliated and furious at getting bested and charged at Ron with a slew of fists, and once again Ron successfully countered and shoved him out of his way.

"My turn." Ron said charging at a dazed Du, landing multiple shots across the agent's body and forcing him back away from the mirrors.

"Boo-yah!"

In the control room Kim and Rufus were having a lot less luck in their fight with Akuma. The beast had already wrecked and destroyed several crates and control panels while attempting to smash the redhead with his charges and so the thought of trying to preserve as much of the room had gone out of her strategy and now it was just a matter of staying alive until reinforcements arrived.

"Trepid, if you can hear me it would be really great if I could get your hand up here." She yelled into her communicator in between dodging a thrown computer monitor.

"Working on it Kim...almost through the ventilation system. Keep him busy."

"Yeah, sure...easy breezy." she groaned seeking shelter from behind a crate to catch her breath.

The break was short lived when she saw a shadow cast over here and a giant foot came slamming down on her position. She grabbed Rufus and rolled safely out of the way before making it back to her feet and sprinting across the room.

"I've got an idea Rufus," she said to the rodent on her shoulder. "But you're not going to like it."

"Huh?" he chirped.

"I need you to get near him and try to have him try to stomp you with his foot. Obviously don't get squashed but jump on his boot and try to climb into his pant leg."

"Ok?" Rufus agreed, but with some confusion.

"When you're in there, do something to distract him. Tickle him, bite him, whatever it takes!"

"Um, okey dokey!" The molerat chirped and saluted, before hopping off of Kim and stood in Akuma's way. He wagged his tiny pink arms in an attempt to distract him from chasing after Kim and to turn his attention towards him instead. The distraction worked and Akuma slowed down and stared at the creature.

"Puny rodent, do you think you're any match for me?" He boasted before lifting up his foot and then slamming it down on Rufus. Kim watched nervously as Akuma ground his boot into the floor as if he were putting out a cigarette butt, hoping desperately that her little friend was able to get out of the way. Akuma lifted his boot up to see if he had squashed him yet was confused when he was unable to find him. She looked hard while Akuma checked the floor and then his boot and then back to the floor around him searching for the mole rat. Kim finally let out a sigh of relief when she saw Rufus' little bright pink head pop up from around his ankle and then quickly scurried up his pant leg.

She could tell Akuma knew that he was somewhere on his body by the unusual twists and turns he suddenly began to do. The brute began to let out some light giggles suggesting he was tickling him from inside, and then Akuma quickly dropped to his knees in a roar of pain.

"Oh Rufus that's low even for him." She murmured. Seeing Akuma on his knees, she finally sensed an opportunity. Lifting up her arm she aimed her grappling gun at a rafter situated above the ailing Akuma and leaped over him and onto a stack of crates which were stacked behind him. Once on top she jumped back off, swinging from the hook and plowing into the back of Akuma's head, toppling him over face first into the ground. It may have been through dirty means but she was able to bring the beast down. Or so she thought, for as soon as she landed back on the ground, Akuma had begun to stand back up, his eyes glowing red and his jagged teeth flashed with rage.

"Uh oh."

Akuma rose back to his feet and emitted a loud roar of anger before shoving his hands into his pants and yanking a stunned Rufus back out. He took the tiny rodent and then threw him across the room and into the side of wall which followed the mole rat falling to the floor where he laid motionless.

"Rufus!" Kim screamed in horror at the sight of her limp friend. Doing so she had taken her eyes of off a recovering Akuma and paid for it when she turned back around and was met with a giant slap from his hand. The force was so powerful it flung her into the stacks of crates she was standing on moments before, shattering several of them before the rest collapsed on top of her.

Ron, who had Will Du on the ropes, saw the exchange and watched as his girlfriend was unceremoniously hurled into a pile of wooden crates and too completely lost his train of thought.

"KP!" he shrieked while watching the crates collapse on top of her.

Sensing a change in momentum, Du capitalized on Ron's distraction and quickly delivered a roundhouse kick directly to in the back of his head, dropping him instantly into a heap on the ground. He then climbed onto the back of Ron and continued to deliver punches to the back of his head and upper body while Ron attempted to regain some semblance of focus.

"Alright Wade, we're out of the ventilation system and in inside the labs, where do we need to go now?" Trepid said over his comm link.

"Good job. According to my schematics, the elevator to the control tower should be to your right about 200 feet."

"On it." Trepid relayed back, running down the hallway until coming to the double doors of the elevator.

"Okay we're here, any chance you've managed to get an override on the elevator shaft?"

"Working on it," Wade replied back, "this security system has a tricky encryption attached to it...tricky but not...unmanageable…"

Ken heard a clicking sound and looked to his left and saw Bonnie pushing the "Up Arrow" button repeatedly.

"What?" She asked innocently. How many times have we busted into places with keys under the doormats and hotwired cars with keys in the sun visor? I didn't think it would hurt to actually try to push the button like a normal person for once."

"Oh come on Bonnie, do you really think that would…."

BING went the double doors.

"...work." Trepid finished, blinking in astonishment.

"You were saying?"

"Got the override on the doors guys," Wade said.

"I was going to say nice timing on Wade's part." Ken smirked while Bonnie rolled her eyes..

"Unfortunately the cabin is on a separate network than the doors are,"

"Of course is it."

"...so your most direct route would be to just scale the shaft and break into bust through its floor to get to the control room."

"Sounds easy enough," Trepid said walking through the opening and staring up the dark shaft. Sounds of the struggle could be heard coming from above.

"Wade any word from the rest of the team?"

"Negative, Kim's comm link went down a few minutes ago."

"We've got to get up there, now!" he sighed.

"Um," Bonnie mumbled.

"What?"

"I was a victim of a kidnapping remember? I don't exactly have my gear with me at the moment."

Trepid thought for a few moments and hopped into the base of the shaft and motioned to Bonnie to join him.

"Grab onto me, I'll use my grappling hooks to get us up the shaft and once we get to the cabin, you take the laser cutter and carve a hole into the cabin."

"That sounds a little convoluted don't you think?"

"Oh come on Miss 'I took ballet for twelve years, and spent the majority of grade school on a human pyramid.' Surely cutting a hole while standing on top of someone isn't that big of a deal. I'd do it myself but between holding you and making sure we don't fall my hands are going to be a little tied up."

"I...was typically on the bottom of those cheerleading pyramids."

"Whatever, just get on my back and get ready to go."

Bonnie flashed an unsure look across her face while she wrapped herself around Ken's shoulders. Once she was secured he raised his arm and shot a grappling hook up the shaft which latched onto a girder about halfway up the large metal tunnel. Trepid depressed a button on his glove and the two ascended up the shaft. Upon reaching the girder, he quickly reached out with his other hand and shot off a second hook while detaching the first one. This time the hook latched on to the under chassis of the elevator lift.

"You're on, Stoney." he said, "The laser cutter is in my shoulder pocket."

Bonnie carefully unbuttoned his shoulder pocket and pulled out the small device.

"Got it."

"Alright, I've got your legs, just I'm going to need you to lean up just a bit and start to cut the surface in between those two hoses."

"Okay."

"Don't cut the hoses, they're brake lines. Sever those and we're going to get squashed."

"Sure thing Trep. Just balancing here on the back of a guy's shoulders suspended a few hundred feet in the air by a wire, cutting my way through a metal plate only to take on a giant man-beast. Nooo pressure at all."

"More cutting less talking please," he said, "my arm's getting a little sore."

"I thought the grappling gloves we're supposed to be easier to use than the hand held?"

"Yeah well they weren't really designed for hanging and holding up another body. They were more for personal transportation use over difficult terrain."

"You know the Fearless Ferret had one that he would attach to his belt that could help him carry two people."

"That was an old tv show...it wasn't real..don't care, keep cutting!"

"Sheesh, fine."

Back inside the control room, Kim struggled to free herself from the pile of boxes which came tumbling down on top of her. Her arm had multiple lacerations from wooden shards in the debris and her back was extremely sore. The single punch Akuma landed on her felt as if she had been hit by a car and made it hard to breathe.

Suddenly a bright light had come across her, Akuma stood over her and had lifted above his head the remaining boxes which she had been buried under. Seeing his opponent was still alive, he promptly attempted to slam the crates back onto her, however she mustered enough strength to roll out of the way and eked her way between Akuma's legs and escaped what would have surely been an early demise. She shook the cobwebs from her head and tried to regain focus just as Akuma turned around towards her. She could see in his face that he was becoming increasingly frustrated at her hit-and-run tactics. This came to a head when he pressed a button on his gear which deployed a pair of shoulder cannons. Once they were set into place, an orange glow began to shine from each gun's barrel.

"Shoulder cannons? Seriously?" she mumbled to herself, still catching her breath.

"Seriously." he replied, opening fire and letting out a barrage of energy blasts.

Kim ran away from the blasts through a series of jumps, flips and slides across the room.

"Hmmm, still got it!" she thought to herself, impressed that her old adventurer self was still inside her.

"Grrr!" Akuma growled, annoyed with his misses.

"WHY...WON'T...YOU...DIE!?" he roared while unleashing another series of blasts towards her direction.

Kim began to sense Akuma's increased frustration and thought she might be able to take advantage of it if the right opportunity showed itself. She again dodged his cannon blasts and found herself now in front of the elevator doors. She had an idea and stared down Akuma as he charged up his cannons for another blast, when the orange of the cannon barrels began to glow, she steadied herself and waited for the blasts she knew were coming to be unleashed. Seconds later Akuma shot his guns which flew straight towards Kim. At the last second, she jumped up in the air, missing the blasts which flew straight into the elevator doors. With the blast smoke as cover, she aimed her grappling hook straight at Akuma and fired, the dark carbon fiber hook whizzing through the air and wrapping itself around one of the shoulder cannons. Then out of the smoke came Kim riding off the recoil with a flying kick which landed straight across Akuma's face and throwing him off balance. Kim reached around and grabbed onto his maine and tried hard to "bulldog" Akuma to the ground all the while swiftly dodging his flailing arms.

Kim looked to have found the upper hand on the giant and thought if she could steer him close enough to one of the gel grenades she had placed and detonate it on him, she could bring him down. She spotted one a few feet away from their location laying in a pile of crate debris and was thrown by the blast to the elevator doors. She started to lean down on his neck, forcing him to stumble near the grenade.

"Just..a little...more…" she grunted, putting all of her weight into wrestling the behemoth. Akuma however caught a glimpse of the LED light on the grenade and figured out what Kim had planned. He reached over to his shoulder cannon which she had wrapped her grappling hook around, placed a firm grip on the gun and dislodged it from its mount and flung it out like a whip with his arm. Kim, whose arm was still attached to the hook, was promptly yanked off of Akuma's neck and found herself now violently flying through the air. Not letting go of the shoulder cannon, Akuma then began to whip and fling the cable and Kim like a child's toy through the air before letting go and sending Kim crashing into an array of control panels which sent glass and sparks flying everywhere.

Kim laid in a heap of broken electronics and glass shards. She groaned while trying to get up but her body was in so much pain it took all that she could just to get to her knees. The taste of blood pooled in her mouth and her vision was blurred. Out of the side of her eye she made out a large dark outline of Akuma hunched over a desk looking over at her. She panted and groaned as she tried to get out of his range, an act which was as futile as a wounded deer trying to escape a hunter. She knew that she was outmatched and the only thought running through her head was to hold out until Trepid made it back into the tower. If Trepid made it back.

She slowly scooted herself away from Akuma's shadow, in a pitiful attempt to escape. Her grappling hook was still attached to the cannon and she drug it behind her like a ball and chain, its outer metal shell making a raspy scraping sound across the floor and debris. Akuma went for the kill, tossing the control panels he was standing in front of like toys and slowly and methodically made his way towards her. Kim tried her hardest to escape but it was no use. Akuma reached down and grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to her feet, her legs kicking aimlessly in a weak attempt of escape. Akuma kneeled down and faced his opponent eye-to-eye and flashed an evil grin.

"Had enough yet?" he growled arrogantly.

She winced a scowl of disdain towards her adversary who she knew had bested her. And she knew that unless by some miracle that Trepid came through the hole where the elevator doors used to be that she and Ron were both done for. She knew she had to try to hold out for as long as she could so in an act of defiance, she furled up her lip and spit a large wad of blood and spit across Akuma's face. He was taken back by the slight and in a last ditch effort with all of her strength, swung her fists wildly trying to land any sort of punch on him.

Unimpressed with the offensive, Akuma stood back up and grabbed Kim's hair closer to their roots, turned her around and slammed her head-first into one of the control panels with so much force it broke the composite countertop.

Back in the elevator shaft, Ken and Bonnie had run into a problem. While they were working feverishly to break into the elevator lift, the blast Akuma had hit the elevator doors with severely damaged their work area. The resulting impact not only blew off the doors to the elevator, but it also dislodged the lift from the tracks and made the lift fall ten feet down the shaft with Ken and Bonnie underneath it.

"Are you okay?" Ken murmured, his hand outstretched and holding Bonnie upside down by her ankle, swinging freely high above the ground.

"Well, on the bright side I'm not dead." she said shaken. "What the hell was that?"

"From the sound of it, I'd say that would be our side losing."

"Could you um, maybe pull me up? I'm so over being hung from a thread today."

"I'm not really in the position to do that," he replied looking at his surroundings. "Between holding you and having my other arm still attached to the grappling hook, I don't have the leverage to do that. Is there any way you can try to bend up and grab my wrist? he asked.

Bonnie tried to reach up and grab Trepid's arm but the precarious nature of the state they were made it difficult to reach.

"I, I don't think I can do it." she whined.

"Okay, well that just means we go to Plan B." he said.

"You have a Plan B?"

The agent was quickly losing his grip on the sweaty leg of Bonnie so he went back to looking at his surroundings until he saw a cable hanging off the shaft.

"I do now."

"Ken…"

"You're not going to like it."

"Yeah well I'm not really a fan of this situation either." Bonnie snapped indignantly.

"Okay, well do you see that cable hanging on the side of the shaft?" Ken asked, nodding towards the cable in question.

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'm going to swing you back and forth and then let you go and when I do, you flip around and grab that cable."

"THAT'S YOUR PLAN?!"

"You have a better idea?"

"Do you?" He demanded. There was a pause, in which Bonnie did not reply. "Didn't think so." he said as he began wriggling his body back and forth, "Swing with me and help me get some momentum."

Bonnie sighed and started in on her own gyrations to build up their swinging. After a few seconds they had reached enough of a velocity that Ken was comfortable working with.

"Alright Stoney, on three. One...Two...Three!" he said letting go of her leg as they reached the apex of their swing. Ken held his breath as he watched Bonnie curl up into a ball and flip several times through the air before stretching out rightside up and grabbing onto the cable.

"Good job!" he shouted over to her.

"Ken?" she whimpered clenching to the cable. "Next time you go off on an adventure, BE SURE TO PACK A SPARE GRAPPLING HOOK!"

"Yeah...duly noted." he said catching his breath. "Hey check it out." he pointed.

"What?"

"That blast...it blew a hole in the bottom of the lift where we were cutting. It did our job for us."

"So it did...is this the part where you ask me if I can get to it and crawl through? Because by the looks of it I can."

"Good. Do that and I'll come in behind you." he said as he started swinging again in hopes of being able to reach the cable.

It was a tight fit but Bonnie was able to scale along the bottom of the elevator lift and make it into the smoky cabin interior.

Now on somewhat sturdy ground, Bonnie peaked her head down through the hole to see how Trepid's progress was going.

"You coming?" She asked.

"Not sure, he said swinging back and forth in an attempt to regain momentum. "Almost… There...Got it!" he exclaimed, grabbing the cable.

"Great, now...now what?" she said seeing a problematic look on Trepid's face.

"The grappling glove...I can't retract it. When the lift fell it jammed the hook into the housing."

"So take your glove off genius, you have two."

"Which is the problem...these things aren't made for two people."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I need you to head on up ahead of me." he said as he wrestled with holding onto the cable with one hand while trying to deglove the grappling hook from his other.

"Um, did you not just see that explosion? You know, the one where we fell and almost died...again?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll be right behind you, once I get up there and can scale the side of the shaft…" He grunted, "maybe those parkour lessons weren't for nothing after all."

"Here, reach down and take this," he said pulling off his glove with the one good grappling hook on it still. "Use this to reach Kim and Ron., do whatever you can to stop Du and Akuma from taking those mirrors."

"Okay...um, are you expecting me to take them on with my hands and feet?" she quipped.

"Well, your predecessor did manage to do all the stuff you do with a grappling gun."

"Yeah I think this situation calls on something with a little more umph." she said while putting the grappling glove on her hand and making a triggering gesture.

"Fine, take this too." he said pulling out a handgun from his shoulder holster.

Bonnie looked at him with shifty eyes. "I thought only L3 agents were able to use firearms…"

"Yeah well, consider yourself promoted." he said reaching the gun out to her and handing it off. "I'm assuming you know how one of those work or do I need to show you?"

Bonnie gave the handgun a once over, turned off the safety, pulled back the slide and loaded a bullet into the chamber without hesitation.

"Well, look at you."

"Yeah well, when you're father is a Life Member of the NRA, you tend to get shown your way around one of these." she smirked.

"Duly noted," Ken replied impressed, "now go up there and help those guys out. I'll be right behind you."

Back in the control tower, Akuma grabbed Kim's leg and pulled her bloodied, motionless body out of the debris pile and displayed high above his head as if he were a fisherman with a prize catch.

"Excellent job Akuma," Du said, still beating on Ron, "perhaps you should try to get your friend to regain conscious so she can watch her boyfriend's final moments."

Akuma concurred and pulled Kim's limp body up from the floor like a fisherman with his prized catch. Her face was covered in blood, originating from a large gash on her forehead, a bloody nose and cuts on her lips. Her left eye was swollen shut and her eyelid had begun to turn purple from injury. He propped her on his knee and proceeded to slap her across the cheek to get her to regain conscious. After several attempts, she let out a small groan and began to move.

"Whuh...where…" she .

"Welcome back dear Kimberly." Du

"We thought you'd like to be awake to see this." Akuma growled contently grabbing her chin and turning her attention on the beating Ron had continued to receive.

"R-ron...no…" she said reaching out in vain with a weak trembling arm.

"Uh uh uh….Look but don't touch." he said tightening his grip around her as they both watched a beaten Ron fall to his knees in defeat.

"A valiant effort young Stoppable, but a foolish one nonetheless." he started while looking down at his opponent. "I believe the time has come for us to wrap up this little exchange. Tell me, have you ever heard of the dim mak?"

"Noooo!" Kim cried out again while desperately trying to get out of her captive's grip.

"Is that...like...some Ju Jitsu or somterng…" Ron slurred in a sarcastic defiance, still severely dazed from the cheap shot he received earlier.

'Hardly. In Chinese it means 'Touch of Death.' It is an ancient martial arts technique where one can deliver a lethal blow with literally the touch of their finger to their opponent.

"Ron...get up! Get out of here!"

"Now now, calm down my dear, you'll get your chance in due time. Now, as I was saying, the technique is believed to work in the same manner as acupuncture, using pressure points in the body. For decades it was thought as a myth, dismissed by many in popular culture as nonexistent fluff promoted by frauds. But the truth is that it is very real. The martial arts equivalent of a nuclear weapon, known only to a few students deemed worthy enough to possess the knowledge. By the sounds of your lady friend over there it would appear she is familiar with the term."

"Oh...and I suppose you're 'worthy' enough to know it?"

"Me, ah ha ha ha...no." Du laughed, "But Master Sensei...he knew. It's amazing what one can say when the proper leverage is applied."

In hearing that, all of the pain and aches Ron's ravaged body seemed to suddenly dissipate and instead was replaced with a sense of rage to hear that Du had harmed his master. He struggled but rose to his feet to stare down his opponent for one final stand.

"K-knew?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MASTER SENSEI!" he yelled as he lunged towards Du with clenched fists flying desperate to land on their intended target. Still through all of his rage, Will Du was still too powerful for him and countered with devastating accuracy, resulting in Ron again being thrown to the ground while a screaming Kim looked on helpless.

"What I did or didn't do to your master is not important. What is important is what I intend to do to you." He said removing his glove and rubbing his bare index finger together with his thumb. "As my grandfather used to say, 'Only death can cure a fool.'"

Kim knew that she had to do something and fast. Failure to do so would result in her witnessing her boyfriend's death and more than likely shortly after her own. Whatever she did, she would have to get out of Akuma's hardened grip. She tried to think through her clouded thought and the stinging of her eyes from the blood and remembered an old trick her Nana had taught her during a Thanksgiving in high school. She took the heel of her boot and ran it as hard as she could down Akuma's shin.

The trick worked.

Akuma reeled in pain, loosening his grip on Kim, allowing her to wriggle out of his grasp and started to limp towards Ron to push him out of the way of Du's incoming dim mak strike.

Meanwhile from behind the action, Bonnie jumped through the smoldering hole of the former elevator doors using Ken's grappling hook and rolled into the room. Incensed at the sight of Du, she pulled out the handgun and aimed it in his direction.

"Hey Asshole! CURE THIS!" she yelled pulling the trigger and letting off several rounds in Du's direction.

Du had seen Kim lumbering towards him out of the corner of his eye and swiftly reached out to grab her and then proceed to swing around towards Bonnie with Kim acting as a human shield. Bonnie was not a great shot as several of the rounds were heard ricocheting off the walls and ceiling. However one appeared have found its target. A quick "ZIP" sound was heard and Kim suddenly arched backwards and let out a huge gasp. Her weight on Du's arm became heavier as her body no longer fought to stand up. He felt his hand become wet and he knew that Kim had been hit. He then leaned into her and gently whispered:

"Well played my dear, thank you." he said mockingly before he pulled his arm back and letting her fall to her knees.

Ron hearing the shots watched as his girlfriend fell to the ground, grabbing her side and then pulling her hand up, revealing it drenched in crimson.

"K-KP?" he murmured trying to sit up.

There was no words, she simply turned her head and looked back at him. Her face was several shades paler than normal and an expression of deep fear and panic was slapped across it. She tried to answer him but only managed to cough up a simple "R-r-Ro…".

Ron crawled over to her just in time to catch her in his arms.

Will Du stood over the couple as they each gasped for air while trying to console each other.

"Two turtle doves will show thee, where my cold ashes lie, and sadly murmuring tell thee

How in tears I did die" he said with a smug before turning his attention across the room to Bonnie who was still standing in the ruins of the elevator doorway, her face beaming with regret and her hands still holding onto the gun, her finger continuing to pull the trigger over and over on the empty magazine.

"And, that is why Global Justice doesn't allow agents under L3 status to have a firearm." he said yanking the gun out of her hand, removing the clip and throwing both in different directions.

Bonnie snapped out of her shock, backed up a bit and put up her fists into a striking position.

"Ha ha ha ha," Du laughed at the act. "For being so green you sure have a lot of spunk. I can appreciate that."

"Well in that case you're going to love me!" Trepid's voice said from behind Bonnie, finally out of the elevator shaft and jumping over her and straight into Du. The two agents engaged in hand-to-hand combat which a fresh Trepid was easily taking it to Du.

While the two fought, Bonnie rushed over to where Ron was sitting with a limp Kim strewn across his lap.

"Omigod, omigod, omigod, K I am..so...sorry! I wasn't aiming for you, I'm sorry!" she wept in a rare instance of sympathy towards her old rival. She kneeled down next to Kim and Ron to see what she could do to help.

"Get away from her!" Ron said slapping Bonnie's hand away from his injured girlfriend whom he continued to cradle in his arms .

"Ron, I need to see her wound and see what needs to be done!"

"Haven't you done enough?! And since when do you know anything about paramedic skills?"

"Since I….uh...let's just call it a hobby."

"A hobby? I thought your notion of a hobby was getting drunk and laid."

"Shut up Ron! Just...shut...up." she said pulling back the tattered strands of Kim's shirt. "The blood's not dark so the bullet didn't hit her liver, and the location of it we might have lucked out."

"If she was lucky, she wouldn't be sitting on the ground WITH A OF BULLET WOUND BONNIE!"

Bonnie moved Ron's arm out of the way and went into a far back pocket of Kim's utility belt but Ron slapped her hand away again."

"DON'T TOUCH HER!"

"Ron, I need to get...fine..you know what, you can do it." she resigned, "On her utility belt, open up the third pocket on the right and there should be a tampon in there."

"A tampon? Seriously Bonnie if you haven't noticed Kim isn't exactly bleeding from her -"

"Just..get...the... damn tampon Ron." she ordered, trying very hard to keep from punching him.

Ron sighed and did what he was asked. He leaned around and opened up the third pocket on the right and sure enough there were several tampons located within it.

"How? How did you know there were tampons in there" Ron demanded while handing her the small white piece of cotton..

"...it's my belt.." Bonnie mumbled under her breath as she began to remove the plastic wrapping.

"Come again?"

"I, I said It's...my...BELT!" she repeated.

"What? How is that?"

"Long story, for right now, will you just shut up and keep her still?" she said scowling into Ron's eyes. "Alright Kim, I know you're going to hate me for this but I've got to do this, and it's going to hurt. You ready Ron?"

"Ready for what?"

"This." she said shoving the tampon into the hole...with Kim responding in a chilling scream of pain. "Sorry."

"What did you just do?"

"Old battlefield trick. Tampons are cotton, sterile and lightweight, and great for plugging gunshot wounds."

"How do you know these things?" Ron demanded.

Bonnie rolled her eyes and then shot a look at him. "Oh come on Ron isn't it obvious?! Do I really have to spell it out for y-"

The sound of a click cut her off, followed by a series of loud explosions.

"Uh oh," she said looking down at Kim's arm. Ron had made her so frustrated with his questioning that she hadn't paid attention to the placement of her hands and had accidentally pressed the detonator for the gel grenades on Kim's wrist. "Great, see what you made me do?!" Bonnie snapped, returning to her work of trying to save the woman on the floor.

"What I did?!" Ron demanded incredulously.

She peered over Ron's shoulder and saw several large, transparent green cubes pop up across the room...inside one of them, she saw an upside down Ken Trepid trapped.

"Crap." she murmured.

"It appears that your little justice squad is a tad rusty Agent Trepid." He mocked, "Tell me, is this the part of where your delusions of heroism take over and you tell me how I won't get away with this?

"Screw you Will." Ken responded upside down and suspended within his green cubic prison, struggling to free himself.

Du glanced back towards Ron and Bonnie, who were feverishly working to mend their teammate. "It was foolish to think that you could recruit a bunch of amateurs to do the job which people like you and I spent years to prepare for. Look at what damage you've caused them. Look at the fear on their faces, like children in Darfur."

"They..were...doing...this...years...ago...you traitorous...son of a bitch!"

Trepid replied while who tossing and turning in anger, desperately trying to break the gel block.

"No, they were fetching cats out of trees and preventing mullet-clad cartoon villains from stealing wheelchair motors for monster trucks. Not necessarily preventing ICBMs from detonating over metropolitan areas or even preventing car bombs from going off outside of consulates. Don't confuse some do-gooders in over their heads with legitimate, professionals who do this for a living."

"They might be amateurs, but they sure as hell aren't a bunch of turn-coat cowards like you ended up being."

Du walked calmly up the gel wall and flicked it with his finger, causing a gentle ripple to come over the cube. "I'm see myself more of an agent of change these days." he said as he walked passed Trepid and over to the canister of mirrors.

"Akuma, we have what we have come for."

"But they're still breathing."

"They're no longer a threat to us, leave them."

"Shouldn't I finish them off?"

"What's the point? They'll be too busy holding a vigil around a hospital bed for us to care...and in a few hours it's not going to matter."

"But.."

"That's an order Akuma! Now, seeing that our primary exit has been compromised, would you be so kind please make us a new one?"

"Fine," he said as he aimed his functioning shoulder cannon at the ceiling and proceeded to blast holes through the ceiling and walls of the control tower, creating a massive opening to the outside. Through the dust there was a subtle humming sound which grew louder and soon the unforgettable shape of Drakken's hovercraft appeared over the opening and a ladder descended down from it. Du made his way up the ladder first, secured the mirrors inside the hovercraft and then motioned down to Akuma to make his way up. Halfway up the ladder Du yelled down to his partner.

"On second thought, maybe we should finish them off. People with that kind of reckless tenacity tend to launch a final assault after they regroup."

Akuma made a cheshire grin and aimed his shoulder cannon back towards the group who were still tending to Kim's injuries.

"LOOK...OUT!" Kim whispered, while attempting to point towards the incoming blasts.

Bonnie heard her and looked up just in time to see two orange blasts barreling towards them. She dove into Kim and Ron with enough force that the blasts barely missed their location, exploding the control tower's flooring in the process.

The three of them laid in a disheveled heap when the floor beneath them began to crack and crumble from the blasts.

"Good call Kim," Bonnie said, pulling herself off her two counterparts and flipping her hair out.

"Kim?"

There was no response.

"KP?" Ron said nervously while shaking his girlfriend's shoulder.

"Kim? Hey, Possible.."

There was still no response so Bonnie quickly leaned over Kim's battered, motionless body and began to check her vitals.

"I-is is...is she?"

"She's passed out. Bonnie said to a shaken Ron while inspecting her eyes. "Dilated eyes...we need to get her to a hospital, pronto."

While Ron cradled the lifeless body of his girlfriend, Bonnie heard a noise.

"Did you hear that?" she asked.

"Hear what?"

"That sound...it's like a cracking….oh crap."

She caught a glimpse of the entire section of the control tower's flooring which Akuma had blasted began to crack and collapse. The floor gave way and began to fall to the ground far below, including the part where Kim laid and soon Kim's unconscious body began to follow gravity and fall out of the control tower.

Ron dove and grabbed her limp hand but she still continued to slide away. Bonnie acted quickly and grabbed Ron's pant legs. The weight of Kim and Ron's bodies were too much for her and they continued to inch closer and closer to a 10-story fall. Bonnie dug into some debris with all of her strength but Ron continued to slip, and now was completely hanging vertically over the edge. He watched as his little red velvet box became free from his pant pocket and fell past his eyes and down into the smoldering debris far below. He didn't care at that point to try to even attempt to save it and instead was more worried about keeping Kim from following suit.

Akuma had now turned his sights on the green cube which Trepid was trapped in and unleashed another series of blasts into his direction. Ken winced, unable to move as the rounds penetrated multiple holes through the cube's surface.

Bonnie's face was red with tears of pain streaming down them as she continued in vain to keep her two partners from falling. She braced her legs around the remains of a control panel but her hands were becoming sweaty and her grip was failing. She was just seconds away from losing her grip when she saw Trepid's goo-covered hands reach over her, grab Ron's free arm and with a giant tug yanked he and Kim back up onto solid ground, both landing in another heap.

The blasts to the cube had damaged its structure enough that he was able to escape.

"What did you do Bonnie?!" he asked after he caught his breath.

"Apparently she missed her intended target." Ron growled, still recovering from his beating and clinging to Kim.

"Great…" he muttered, still pulling chunks of green gel off his body and getting on his comm link.

"Wade, it's me.

"Hey Trep, I'm getting a lot of alarms going off over there, what's going on?

"The mission's a bust, Du got away with the mirrors.

"That's not good."

"Looks like he commandeered Drakken's old hovercraft. Run some calculations and see if you can find a way to track it."

"Will do...er, so to speak. This is bad isn't it?"

"It's worse than you think."

"How so?"

"I need you to get an ambulance out here asap. Possible's down."

"Hurt? How bad?"

"Bad."

Ken walked back across the smoldering floor and picked up a still unconscious Rufus and brought him back over to to the group and then proceeded to walk away to the palette where the mirrors had been and sat down, rubbing his hands through his hair and over his brow trying to make sense of what had just went down.

"Good morning Dr. Possible."

"Good morning to you too Tara," Kim's mom replied approaching the nurse station and adjusting her smock. "How is our day looking?"

"Well, let's see…" the blonde replied looking at her monitor. "You have a consultation with the Fitzgeralds scheduled at 2 this afternoon, a scheduled procedure to remove an acoustic neuroma at 3, a follow up appointment with Mr. Flores at 4, and the rest of the shift appears to be just rounds and on-call."

"Seems like a fairly light shift seeing the craziness that we had the last couple of days. I have to admit it was really sweet of you to come in and help out during your break, especially this early in the morning."

"Awh, it's nothing. Besides, you know how all of that hospital volunteer work looks on the med school applications." she winked.

"True. Although I wouldn't think Logan would be too happy about it."

"Nah, it's fine. It gave him an excuse to go camping with a few of his buddies at Oregon State." she answered handing Ann a stack of medical files. "And besides, I know he wouldn't admit to it, but I'm sure he's happy that he's getting out of another wedding planning session."

"Yeah, how has all of that been going?"

"Pretty good. Lot's of compromising. Since money's a little tight we are leaning more towards having a more low-key ceremony, possibly even holding it at our farm."

"Oh! Farm weddings can be a lot of fun!" she exclaimed, "James' brother Slim is a regular cowboy and did that up at his Montana ranch. It was one of the best weddings we have ever went to."

"Seriously?"

"Naturally it had the whole Country theme going on, the men were dressed in denim, they had a bluegrass band playing music, and it was followed by a pot-luck dinner and an old fashioned hoe-down."

"That does sound like a lot of fun. Logan had looked into taking the pot-luck dinner approach too. With his father overseeing so many weddings over the years he had his share of invitations and has told me that the pot-lucks are some of the best receptions he had ever attended. But, I told him we had promised Ron and Mr. Barkin that they would cater the event so we're going to honor that and help them grow their business."

Tara then began to look around with a sneaky look to see if anybody was around before continuing, "And um, speaking of which, has there been any news out of Eugene yet?" she asked in a much softer tone.

"Surprisingly no." she shrugged. "After we had given Ron our blessing to propose to Kimberly it was all he could do to contain himself, I was under the assumption that he would be asking her right as he got off the bus with the amount of excitement he had going on."

"Awh, that's so sweet."

"Oh you should have seen him. Bless his heart." she laughed, "He came over to the house and sat me down on the couch, asked if we could get Jim on a webcam screen to join us before going into his speech which I think he had been rehearsing all morning. Then when we finally got an uplink with Jim at the space station, he totally panicked and couldn't remember anything that he had wrote."

"That's Ron for you."

"I mean, I don't know why he would be so nervous about asking us. This is Ron we're talking about. He's been practically family since before the two of them could walk. And with all that they've been through, how he stuck with her through all of her problems, bringing her back from the brink like he did, of course we were going to give him our blessing. Granted, Jim didn't help matters by subtly referring to his polarity research he has been up to, but I think it was more him trying to be a dad, even if it was from space."

"Well, I'm sure if Ron hasn't asked her yet that there is a good reason for it. Maybe he's waiting for just the right moment and it just hasn't presented itself yet."

"I agree, Ron really tries to be romantic when it counts."

The two ladies continued to talk and chuckle back and forth to each other until a nurse ran up to the station and interrupted them.

"Doctor Possible are you doing anything at the moment?"

"I was just about to do some rounds, is there something you need help with?"

"The ER is a little light staffed at the moment and we have an call that we're going to need help with. White female, early 20's being brought in with a GSW to the abdomen and some head trauma. Any chance you can assist?"

"Sure thing, nothing like a little ER trauma to keep things interesting. She said unbuttoning her smock. I'll get scrubbed in and meet you in Room 3."

"Great, the call's from the space center explosion."

"The what?!"

"The Middleton Space Center, It's all over the news. It's been blown up. I guess whatever reason they had to evacuate everyone yesterday was a legitimate problem."

"Oh my God!"

It was then when the double doors of the ambulance bay swung open with a team paramedics rushing a gurney towards the three women. Ann's eyes became wide and she dropped the file folder she was holding when she saw the faces of a bloodied Ron and Bonnie following the patient in.

-END-


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

Soft golden rays of morning sunlight streamed across the battered face of Kim as she laid unconscious in her hospital room, hooked up to a slew of tubes and wires with only the slight sounds of oxygen squirts and heart monitor beeps breaking the silence. Her disheveled hair still contained small traces of debris throughout it while her fine porcelain skin was marked with various purple and red hues of bruises and disrupted by rows of sutures. Her neck was encased in a brace and her arm was riddled with lacerations. Despite her appearance, she laid in peaceful silence.

Next to her head, a battered Rufus was curled up on the pillow sleeping and trying to recover from the injuries he had sustained in the fight earlier.

To her side, the peacefulness was disrupted by Ron. He himself marked with cuts and bruises, stood guard over his girlfriend in silent reverence while sporting a vengeful scowl. He gently caressed down her injured arm, his finger carefully detouring around the cuts and then working its way back up it.

There was a gentle knock at the door, Ron peered up with his bloodshot eyes to see Tara gently making her way into the room, tablet in hand.

"Hey," she whispered softly, "I'm just doing my rounds and need to check on Kim."

"Huh? Oh...yeah, alright," Ron replied scooting back from the bed and giving her space to work. "Are the camera crews still staked outside?"

"Yeah, they're starting to set up camp and are lined up around the block. Apparently, this is national news."

"Great." Ron gave a long suffering sigh.

Tara inspected the set of IV bags hooked to Kim's arm. "How are you doing?"

"Not good," he finally said after several seconds of delay. "Not good at all."

Tara's forced smile turned into a look of concern and so after she had finished up her patient monitoring, she pulled up a chair next to Ron and sat next to him. The two continued to sit in silence for several seconds, both watching Kim's chest slowly rise and fall with her breaths. Tara slid her hand into her friend's and gave a firm squeeze of reassurance.

"The, doctors, well, I guess Kim's mom, said that the bullet didn't hit anything critical," he finally muttered after several seconds of silence.

"Well, that's good to hear."

"Yeah, she said the bullet kind of knicked her large intestine so they're going to have to monitor that for a while to make sure it heals properly and doesn't come down with pet...petro...something or other.

"That would be peritonitis," his friend corrected.

"Yeah, that. Whatever that means."

"It's inflammation of the inner abdominal walls. It's nothing to mess around with and can be fatal if it becomes septic. The bullet might not have hit anything critical but she's not out of the woods."

"Great," he sighed. "She failed to mention that part to me."

"She was probably trying to protect you from worrying more than what you already are. You know how Doctor Possible can be."

"I know."

Tara gave her friend a small smile. "I'm sure she will be fine. Kim's a fighter, and aside from being able to wear a bikini, she should recover from this. It might take a little while but she _will_ be fine." she assured.

"Just my luck." Ron gave a rueful smile. "Do you have any idea how much time and effort I've put into trying to get Kim into a bikini? Or was it getting her out of the bikini?"

Tara gave a snort. "That's the spirit. If it's one thing I've learned working here it's that a positive attitude can go a long way."

Ron's face fell. "I know, but-"

"There's a but?"

"Yeah, there's a but. It's more than just the gunshot wound. They can't tell yet because of all the swelling but they think she might have damage to her left eye, and there's also a strong chance she suffered some sort of head trauma after Akuma slammed her head through…" Ron choked up for a second before continuing, "through the control panel." His voice trembling as his countenance moved from aggrieved to angry.

Tara squeezed her friend's hand tight again and pulled him in for a comforting hug. She could feel the heat from his anger radiating across his skin and he shook as he tried to contain it.

"Why did we have to do this?! Why couldn't we have just stayed in Eugene like good, retired crime fighters and enjoyed each other's company like we had planned!? "She even suggested that we have a naked weekend together."

She winced uncomfortably at the oversharing, but kept her peace and let the young man vent.

"Sorry." Ron pulled out of the hug. "I mean, she even had her doubts about doing it the other night but we still went through with it. Ugh...why didn't I go with my gut?"

"Because this is what you two do," Tara answered refocused. "You two help people, you protect them, save them if you have to. When you have a passion like that it's hard to just up and walk away from it."

"Yeah, but we never had _this_ sort of thing happen to us either," he said pointing again to Kim's body. "Sure, we came close a few times, but not once in all those years did either of us ever get hurt this badly. But this...this is too close to my nightmares about graduation coming true."

Tara nodded in sympathy and took his left hand into hers. "Well, to be fair, you two have been out of the game for some time now. You were probably both a little rusty compared to what you were like in high school."

Ron picked furiously at a seam in the orange cushion on the arm of the chair with his right hand. "I know," Ron acknowledged, then stopped suddenly. "Oh, and on top of it all, I didn't get to pop the question either."

"You didn't?"

He sighed. "Nope. I was waiting for an opportune time to do it and managed to lose the ring in the process."

"You did?"

" _Three. Times_."

"Oh no!" Tara gasped letting go of his hand, "I am so sorry Ron."

"Wasn't your fault. But man, those stones weren't exactly cheap."

Tara stood and lightly rubbed her index finger across Kim's hair. "I'm sure. But you have to know that in the end she's going to say yes to you, no matter what you use to ask her right?"

Ron made a tiny smirk and nodded in agreement. "I know, but I just wanted it to be special with a lot of grandiosity and make it a big deal. Especially after everything we went through a while back. During those years...I thought that I had lost her completely as a friend."

Tara turned a caring smile toward Ron as she continued to smooth Kim's hair. "I know, Ron, I was there. Still, Ron, that's not your style, and you know that's not _her_ style either." Tara stopped messing with Kim's hair and reached into the pocket of her dancing cow motif smock and pulled out a short string. "I mean, you could literally tie _this_ string around her finger and she'd give you the same answer as what you would have gotten if you gave her that 'Kobe Special' you originally bought. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise and that you were supposed to do something different, something a little more, you know...subtle."

Ron's eyes hardened. "A blessing, Tara? Do you call _this_ a blessing?" he asked pointing to Kim's battered face.

"You know what I meant Ron, calm down." Tara quickly sat down next to Ron again and grabbed both of his hands gently. "I didn't mean to get you riled up."

"Sorry, I've been mad all night," he growled. "It's not you."

"Do you want to talk about it? I can hang here for a little while longer before I have to check on the patient in A113."

Ron leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "The guy who's responsible for this. He used to be on our side."

"He was?"

"Yeah, he was the top agent in Global Justice."

"Global what?"

"It is... _was_ some top international secret spy agency."

"Probably why I've never heard of it."

"Yeah, so anyways they had this guy name W-"

Ron stopped talking when a set of heavy knocks sounded from the door.

"Ocupado," Ron grumbled not wanting to be disturbed.

Despite his response, the door opened and a still disheveled Bonnie followed by Ken Trepid walked in.

"What do you two want?"

"Nice to see you too," Trepid said peering over the bed. "How's Kim doing?"

"How's it _look_ like she's doing?"

"Okayyyy, Tara?" Bonnie interrupted, turning her attention to what she had hoped would be a more willing participant to her questioning.

"Banged up pretty bad, but she should recover."

"No major damage to any internal organs?" Trepid asked.

"Not major, but she has an intestinal wound that could get infected."

"That's kind of good. Those bullets can really muck up the organs in the abdominal cavity with the amount of force they enter with."

Bonnie grabbed Kim's patient file from the wall holder and started skimming through its pages. "Any traumatic brain injury?"

"Probably a concussion, we'll have to run her through a protocol once she's conscious to be sure."

"Let's see," Bonnie mumbled to herself and ignoring Tara's reply, "multiple lacerations to facial region and extremities. No big, just cosmetic. Damaged blood vessels inside vestibule. Just a nose bleed. HA!, She's on Brevoxyl-4, I knew it!"

Tara quickly stood and approached the girl. "Um, HIPAA much, Bonnie?"

"No, hate the taste of Pabst Blue Ribbon and I Joy Division blows," she remarked continuing to go through the file.

"That's _hipsters,_ Bonnie, not H..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatev's. Blood transfusion performed after blood loss, good for her at least. Overall estimated hospital stay…"

"GIMME THAT!" Tara shouted and yanked the folder out of Bonnie's hands.

"2-3 weeks. Yeah, that's not gonna work for us," Bonnie continued despite losing her reference.

Ron had reached his boiling point with the two, and stood from his chair. " _For us?_ "

The brunette sighed before turning to Trepid. "Yeah, she's out."

"Out? What do you mean out?"

"Great," Trepid sighed, ignoring Ron's questions. "Well, I guess that's all we can do here. We better head up to the roof to catch our ride."

"Hello?!" Ron practically shouted from across Kim's bed trying to get the pair's attention.

"What, Ron?" Bonnie asked with a groan.

Ron moved around the bed and faced the duo. "Let's take a quick time out and explain to me WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!? In fact, let's start with why are you." He pointed at Bonnie. "Are conversing with him." He quickly moved his finger to Ken. "Like you're a part of Global Justice or something?"

Bonnie moved from a look of indifference to one of annoyance. "That would be because I _AM_ a part of Global Justice you moron."

Ron's mouth dropped open. "You...what? Huh?"

Bonnie's look of annoyance shifted to one that Ron had seen more times than he could count, one of smug superiority. "I'm an L3 Agent to be exact." She turned to Trepid. "What? You didn't tell him?"

"No," Ron interjected angrily, " _he_ didn't."

Trepid shrugged, "Well, Stoney, you were on break. And we're supposed to be kind of a secret organization. I figured it was kinda need to know?"

Ron's head snapped back and forth between the two as if he couldn't decide which one to spear with his stare. Then he finally settled on glaring at Bonnie. "Stoney?"

"Stoney, _stone_ , Rockwaller, _rock_. It's a stupid nickname he came up with for me because apparently calling me by my _actual_ name is such a chore," she said sending an unflattering look towards Ken.

Ron shifted his focus to Ken and sent an angry glare towards him.

Unfazed by the two unfriendly looks he gave a sheepish grin. "Well, um...this... _is.._.my way of telling you?"

"Ugh, unbelievable!" Bonnie scoffed.

"What? It's not like you were supposed to be here in the first place, Miss 'Don't Bother Me On Spring Break.' I didn't think it was important to the mission."

"ENOUGH!" Ron said slamming his fist onto the table next to him so hard that it caused Kim's unconscious body to jump and the picture of the pastoral scene above it to shudder.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Time Out!" Tara said sternly and moved between Ron and the spies. "If you all are going to get into a shouting match you need to leave the room now! Kim isn't going to heal any faster with the three of you arguing over her!"

"No worries, Tara, we were just about to leave," Bonnie replied with a trademark flip of her hair.

Ron took a deep breath. "Come again?"

"We gotta go, Ron," Trepid repeated. "Despite all of this, Du and Akuma are still out there, now with all of the components they were after and need to be stopped. We have to rendezvous with a helicopter on the roof in ten minutes.

"Ten minutes?"

"Yeah, we need to be prompt about it. This pilot, he's... Well, he's not very keen on us asking for favors so if we're not up there exactly when he lands he's liable to take off without us."

Ron looked down at the teal hospital gown he had been put into upon arriving at the hospital and gave a grunt. "Fine, I can be ready in five. Just move so I can grab my gear from behind you and…" Ron trailed off with a hiss at seeing an uncomfortable look come across both Ken and Bonnie's faces. "What?"

"Yeah, Ron, you're not really um... _going_ _along_ with us on this one," Trepid uttered while rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably.

"Come again?" Ron's eyes began to twitch with anger.

"Well, the whole reason we asked you all along in the first place was...well… I mean… I was down a person and, well, you know… I needed..."

Bonnie had no trepidation at all to intercede in the older man's ramblings. "What Agent Trepid is trying to say nicely is that your services are no longer required for the remainder of this mission. He had a serious lead and needed backup on the account his partner, me, was on a much-needed vacation."

"More like _sidekick,"_ Trepid mumbled.

"H _owever_ as you can see, on the account of an international criminal ambushing her, wrecking her vehicle, kidnapping her, and using her as a hostage before being thrown out a 30-story window, thus ending her vacation. Yada, yada, yada. And now that 'said' partner is back on the case and so you can go back to doing whatever your regularly scheduled break was supposed to entail."

Ron's twitching intensified and his skin began to turn several shades of mottled red. "YOU'RE...JUST…DUMPING US?! JUST LIKE THAT?!"

"Ron, let's be frank about this," Bonnie continued arrogantly, but calmly. "Ken here needed a _competent_ person to fill in for me. Which is why he called in Kim as that last-ditch effort to fill in. Obviously Kim isn't in any position to continue and my vacation is apparently over with, so the pros are going to take it from here."

Ron stammered, trying to find the words. "No, let's not be frank. _You all_ contacted us in the middle of a really, _really_ good romantic moment, made us change our plans for Spring Break, foiled my plans for a marriage proposal-which resulted in the loss of THREE separate engagement rings of varying prices, leveled a space center which was the employer of KP's father along with a few thousand other people and put Kim in the hospital with head trauma and a bullet wound. So there won't be any returning to our 'regularly scheduled break'. And you're acting like it's not a big deal?! It's a pretty FREAKIN' big deal!"

Bonnie's arrogant look flickered for a second into something else. "Marriage proposal?"

Ron was too wound up to catch the short slip. "Yeah, marriage proposal. And according to Trepid here, the reason he called us up was that Drakken was dead and Shego was missing, _not_ because you weren't gracing us with your presence!"

Trepid stepped between the pair. "Look, Ron. There isn't any way I can say this without coming across like a giant, thankless douchebag, but Bonnie's right. Regardless of whatever the reason was, you're not equipped to handle these guys. They aren't some campy villains with a goofy gimmick and a futile plot to take over the world. These guys are trained killers who won't think twice about greasing you the moment you get in their way."

Ron's face actually seemed to become more angry. "Oh, and _she_ is equipped?" he asked pointing toward Bonnie.

Bonnie pushed Ken out of the way and stepped toward Ron with fists clenched and eyes like daggers. "I took two semesters of Muay Thai kickboxing and I'm learning Krav Maga. That's on _top_ of the 12 years of intensive ballet training _which,_ I might add you would be _very_ surprised how much that comes in handy when you're in hand-to-hand combat and outnumbered 4 to 1."

Ron looked wholly unimpressed. "That's not exactly a bold resume'."

Ken stepped between the two again and guided Bonnie away from Ron and toward the door. "Come on, Stoney, we need to get up to the rooftop."

Bonnie looked back at Ron and raised her eyebrow in a snarky manner before turning her back on him and making her way out of Kim's room.

Ken paused at the door after Bonnie left. "Ron, look, it's nothing personal, we just don't have the time to sit around offering thoughts and prayers. But this is what we professionals have to do," he said and closed the door behind him.

The latch clicked and Ron stared at the back of the door in seething silence. His teeth were gnashed so hard together that they appeared to be on the verge of cracking under the pressure and his eyes began to water. He turned his eyes towards an equally stunned Tara who was still standing next to Kim and now holding her hand.

The blonde pulled her open mouth and shut before turning a furled brow toward Ron. "Are you going to stand for that bullshit?" she asked uncharacteristically.

-

Seconds later Ken and Bonnie had made it to a utility elevator which was located down the hallway from Kim's room. While they waited for the doors to open, the superior look Bonnie had been sporting began to give way to a more subtle, melancholy one.

"I messed up bad didn't I?" she asked her partner.

" _Bad_ doesn't even begin to describe it," Trepid replied with an agitated tone.

"Sorry. I mean, I had him in my sights and all and..."

"Now's not the time, Bonnie," Ken grumbled. "We'll deal with it when we get back to base."

"Alright, it's just…"

"No justs, like I said we'll discuss lat-"

Their conversation was abruptly cut when the sound of a door slamming violently open occurred down the hallway from where they were standing. Both swung their heads quickly around to see what the source was and were stunned to see a fuming Ron enter the hallway behind them while pulling on his mission gear.

"Oh, God, he really thinks he's coming along with us," Trepid mumbled to his sidekick.

"As if this day couldn't get any worse," Bonnie added.

"Pros?! You call yourselves _pros_?!" Ron said stomping towards them while pulling his black turtleneck over his head.

"And here comes the guilt trip."

" _YOU'RE THE REASON_ Kim is lying in that room with a gunshot wound! Not because of me, the so-called amateur."

"I know. I'm aware of that and it's regrettable," Bonnie replied returning to the cavalier demeanor as soon as Ron got close.

"Regrettable? REGRETTABLE?! Are you freakin' kidding me. You SHOT HER, Bonnie!"

Just then, a gentle ping was heard and the elevator doors opened and the spy duo entered.

"I didn't mean to, Ron," Bonnie said back from inside the cab while Trepid pressed the close door button feverishly. "I had the shot. I had him right there in my sights, and Du pulled her in at the last second as a shield. It was an accident, and yeah, I feel bad about it."

The doors began to close until Ron's arm suddenly slid through them, forcing the doors back open.

"Yeah, you look really torn up about it Bonnie," he sniped while forcing his way into the cabin. "I knew you were cold-hearted, but to just write off Kim getting shot like a 'whoops, my bad' moment is getting into sub-zero range."

"I saved your life!" she growled while backing him against the wall, her nose firmly pressed into Ron's. "Maybe it was because you were too busy getting your head caved in to realize it, but Du was just about to perform some sort of nasty death punch on your sorry ass before I acted. If I didn't take it, you'd probably be down in the morgue instead of here whining to me about it!"

Ron pushed her back off of him and hit the elevator's emergency stop button. "Whining? You call this _whining?_ This isn't whining, Bonnie. This is someone finally telling you the truth. You damn near killed the woman I love. So, don't ever expect me to thank you for that. I would have rather died."

"This making us late for our ride," Trepid grumbled.

Ron spun to face the older man. "Then start talking. And _maybe_ you'll get to the roof on time."

"Fine, about what?"

 __"You can start with telling me how long Bonnie here's been your partner."

Trepid shrugged. "Technically, she's the sidekick."

"Partner, sidekick, groupie, friend with benefits; I don't care. How long!?"

"I dunno, about a year and a half?" Ken asked Bonnie who nodded in slight agreement.

"So that means…"

Bonnie was scowling at the blond boy and interrupted him. "Yes, I've been moonlighting as an agent while being K's roommate."

Ron matched her scowl. "Is that so? Or is it more like ' _moonlighting as KP's roommate while being an Agent?'_ "

Bonnie's scowl broke, confirming his hunch.

"Okay, fine, more like 'monitor' if you want to call it that," she said, crossing her arms in a huff.

"So you've been _spying_ on us? ALL THIS TIME?!"

"I'd like to think of it more in line with keeping tabs."

Ron didn't look at all impressed by Bonnie's attempted wordplay. "Keeping tabs without knowledge or consent _is_ spying!"

"Oh lighten up, Stoppable! You of _all_ people know that your girlfriend hasn't been exactly the best in terms of reliability these last few years. Do you have any idea how hard it was for Wade to create an algorithm to keep that titty video of hers from popping back up online? Or how excruciating it was to always tag along with you two on all of those get togethers you went on?"

"We never asked you to 'tag along' on those get togethers and we never _wanted_ you to 'tag along' on those get togethers." Ron's face was moving beyond red at this point and nearing purple. "In fact, your third wheel act usually resulted in us deciding to stay in for the night and watch movies instead."

" _Exactly!"_ Bonnie said flashing a sinister grin. "I had first-hand knowledge that a good amount of those events involved various amount of alcohol and other 'recreational' substances at them. Especially that last one I broke up. Why tempt fate right?"

Ron stumbled back from the girl and his eyes went wide. "That last event was a _Seder Meal_ put on by the Hillel group, Bonnie." With a shake of his head and a disgusted snort he continued. "The wine and herbs used in that are not exactly kegs and kilos."

"Seriously? You didn't know what a Seder Meal was?" Trepid asked butting into the conversation.

"Okay, fine, so maybe I didn't know what a Seder was at the time. My bad on the whole Passover thing, I'm not a Hebrew. But still, I was only doing my job."

Ron waved his hands, as if to dispel the previous conversation from the air, before turning his glare back on Bonnie. "That's why _I'm_ here! _I'M_ her boyfriend, it's _my_ job to keep her straight, not yours!"

"Oh please, Stoppable, nine times out of ten you're still two hours away in that time warp of our childhood called Middleton. I'm there all the time. So unless you miraculously manage to have the grades and credits to transfer down to Eugene or you installed a rocket booster into that stupid derelict moped of yours, you aren't there to keep her straight."

"That's B.S. and you know it. How many times since you have moved in has Kim even talked about a non-school related party? Huh? How many?"

Bonnie moved closer to Ron. "None! But that doesn't change a thing. It's still my job to keep tabs on her. When people, that matter more than you or I do, wanted us to keep tabs on her while she was still in college and to make sure that she didn't fall off the wagon or make another national embarrassment out of herself, they gave us the job."

"Who exactly gave you that job? Huh? Because the last time I checked spying on US citizens was illegal!"

Ken's eyes snapped wide.

Bonnie paused for a second. "Besides, you should be thanking me. The way you two go at it like rabbits every time you are near each other she would probably be parents by now if it weren't for me."

Ken swore steam was going to erupt from Ron's ears any second now.

Ron moved within inches of Bonnie. "So barging in on us during 'private time' was doing your job too?"

Bonnie gave an evil smirk and met Ron's furious brown eyes with haughty light green. "Nah, that was for the lulz. That, and you two defiled my recliner. My dad gave me that recliner, it was an heirloom. I took it personally."

"Aaaaand now we're back to TMI," Ken interrupted. "Someone please hit the damn switch."

"Shut up, Ken!" Both Bonnie and Ron said in unison.

"Okay, okay. So, not the drama people."

Ron gave one last glare at Bonnie before pointedly turning towards Ken. "Yeah, don't say that again. Ever," Ron ordered. "You should have told us about Bonnie. I can't begin to tell you how royally cheesed off I am at you."

Bonnie rolled her eyes and stepped back from Ron. "Oh just go for the gold and say ' _pissed off'_ Ron, this isn't Disney Junior."

This brought Ron's attention back to the brunette. "And you, _a freaking agent_?! How could _you_ , of all people, be an agent of an elite spy agency?"

Bonnie scoffed. "Well, I wouldn't call them 'elite' per se. They _did_ base their entire science department around the premise that _you,_ of all people, were the reason behind Kim's successful freelancing and not something like, oh I don't know... _teamwork, her own talent_ or the fact you were backed by a 10-year-old kid genius who had more degrees to his name than you did semesters before you declared for _one._ They're not exactly MI6 when it comes to judgment."

"As for how _I_ could be an agent? Here's a thought: How could _your girlfriend_ go from 'the girl you want to bring home to mom' to 'the girl you bring home passed out drunk in the back of a pickup truck?' People change. Maybe after I got out in the real world I realized how dumb and insignificant being popular in high school actually was. M _aybe,_ I wanted to actually do something with my life to benefit others for once. M _aybe,_ I was approached and recruited on my abilities and tough grit and not on some archaic rivalry."

"Oh yeah, who in their right minds would recruit you? Kenny here?" Ron asked gesturing at Trepid.

"Actually, it was Wade who recruited her," the senior agent corrected.

"Wade?" Ron asked being taken aback.

"Yeah, Wade. He remembered me when I helped to take down Dementor a while ago and thought I had some potential to have an expanded role."

"Well that's not a big deal, Kim's cousin Larry took him down too. And he wasn't even trying."

"Not with another sixteen-year-old glued to his ass he didn't." she remarked, referring to the time she and Kim were stuck together via a Bondo Ball. "Consider it a handicap on what I could _really_ do. You all retired, Ken took over, he needed some help, the rest is what you see. So quit trying to marginalize me."

"You hypocrite. That is all that either of you have done to us from the second this mission started. You call yourselves professional, but all I see is a couple of holdouts from a dead organization with overinflated egos and saddled with sociopathic tendencies," he said depressing the emergency button and re-engaging the elevator. "You started this. You brought us on. We're finishing this, _together..._ capiche?"

Visually fed up with the argument, Bonnie turned to her partner.

After several seconds of silence Ken gave a slight eye roll. "Fine, you can come along," Trepid conceded as the elevator continued to slowly rise.

"And no more spying on KP either," Ron demanded. "She is perfectly capable of going throughout her day without Big Brother peering into her every move."

Bonnie nodded. "Well, the proverbial cat is out of the bag on that one anyway." She then stopped and thought for a second. " _However_ , she only saw me for a second before getting shot, so there's a good chance sh-"

"NO, SPYING! Period! Or I might be inclined to start looking into who authorized it to begin with. I'm not as stupid as you both think."

Bonnie looked to Trepid for guidance, to which he responded with a simple nod of his head in agreement.

"Fine, no more surveillance. But if she falls back into Girls Gone Wild Kim again, it's on your head, not mine."

"I can live with that. Besides, unlike some people, I trust her," Ron remarked while adjusting the pants he had hastily put on earlier before exiting the elevator with his newfound squadmates. "So what's our plan now?"

Ken let out a slight groan. "Our _plan_ went out the window the moment we turned the Space Center into a landfill. Right now we'll hitch a ride back to HQ and figure out with Wade what we're going to do next. That's the best course of action to take."

"Yeah, it's going to be fun telling him about the jet," Ron replied.

"Don't remind me," Ken said as the elevator doors opened onto the hospital roof and letting the blinding bright daylight in. Ron was taken aback by the light, his head was already sore from the beating he had endured earlier. Once he managed to get his vision adjusted against the blue sky he saw a bright yellow helicopter with the words 'CASCADE ADVENTURE TOURS' scripted across its tail and its strikingly familiar-looking pilot impatiently waiting next to it.

"Wait, is that... _Junior_?" Ron asked looking at the pilot who appeared to suddenly become distressed at the sight of the trio.

Trepid adopted a quick pace towards the helicopter and answered the younger man. "Yep. And he's looking a little upset."

He stopped for a second and turned back to the two young adults. "Wait here a sec so I can make sure that he's not going to leave us on the pad in a hissy. Also, Bonnie, _hockey puck_."

Bonnie responded with a nod and watched as her partner headed over to try and smooth over their ride's nerves.

"I'm assuming by the look of his body language that the whole story with you and the soccer team isn't as fabricated as everything else in your college career?" Ron asked leaning on the wall next to the elevator doors.

"Nope," she quipped back.

"That would do it."

"Yeah, well, we were over well before that anyway."

"Distance?"

"Broke."

Ron gave her an incredulous look. "As in _broke_ broke?"

"As in he decided to go all-in to real estate investments after his father died. Shortly after, the economy went to shit and so did his bank accounts."

"Ditching the billionaire playboy boyfriend the moment he's in dire straits? Why am I not surprised," Ron barbed as the two watched Trepid schmooze Junior. "So much for how people change, huh BonBon?"

Bonnie rubbed her forehead in frustration before turning around to Ron. "Look, Stoppable, somewhere you have to draw the line with what you're willing to live with. And I'm not going to spend the rest of my life with a guy who lives in the cargo bay of the same helicopter that he spends all day shuttling bigfoot enthusiasts up to Mt. Hood in."

Ron just shook his head. "Still, you dump him after he loses his dad _and_ his savings. That's a real kick in the balls."

"Meh," she responded half-heartedly while watching Ken wave back to the duo telling them to come on.

"Speaking of which," she said as she spun to face the unsuspecting young man and grabbed his shoulders, "there's my cue."

"Your wha-"

Before Ron could even register what was going on, she had quickly landed a hard knee jab directly into his crotch. The force of which knocked the air out of his lungs and dropped him to the ground instantly.

"Hockey puck." she winked.

"Buh! Buh! Bon….what the?! *UGH!* Sonuva!" Ron gasped while rolling around the ground in pain.

Showing no remorse for what she had just done, Bonnie punched the elevator button, reopening the double doors and then proceeded to grab one of his hands and dragged his fetal positioned body back into the lift.

"Don't take it personally, Stoppable," she said while stepping over him, "but you're needed more back downstairs at K's bedside than you are on that helicopter."

"Buh...I can...fight," he managed to squeak out, still grasping tightly at to the crotch of his pants and trying to sit up.

"And I'm sure you believe that with _all_ your heart, but I think it's best you do what we said earlier and leave this to the professionals." Bonnie stepped out of the elevator car, leaned in and hit the button back to the ground floor. "Make sure K knows I really am sorry about shooting her," she said while Ron watched helplessly as the two chrome double doors shut between them.

Bonnie watched as the little arrow on top of the elevator door lit up red, confirming that the lift and its cargo was heading back towards the bottom floor. Satisfied that Ron was no longer a part of the equation, she flipped her hair back and jogged towards the helicopter.

Trepid and Junior were already inside the craft by the time she strolled up to the helipad and were still in the midst of having a heated conversation based on their body language through the windows. Despite this, Bonnie pulled open the back door and slid onto the bench.

"...don't give me all that formal gobbledegook!" Junior grumbled to Trepid. "If I knew you had that vile, treacherous, horrible woman with you I would have never answered your call!"

"Nice to see you too, Junior," Bonnie remarked sarcastically while she put on a set of headphones.

"No talking from the back seat!" the jilted lover demanded. Bonnie responded with a sneer and a middle finger.

Junior's brow knitted together. "Get out."

"Junior," Trepid said, leaning into him, "we need to go. You guys can continue your little soap opera once we get back to base. I've had about as much teen drama as I can handle today. Right now time is of the essence, and I'd like to think the world isn't about to enter a major crisis on the account of your hurt feelings."

"She did more than hurt my feelings. She ruined my life!"

"Hey, I wasn't the one who decided to throw all of Daddy's money into timeshares in the middle of freaking nowhere! Do you even know where Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina is? I'll give you a hint, NOT where you buy a luxury vacation home!"

"I bought into an idea that it was going to be! I was practicing forward thinking."

"Maybe you should have practiced diversifying your portfolio! Moron."

Junior's face twisted into a sinister sneer which would have made his father proud. "I said, 'Get out, you witch!'"

"Hey, here's an idea you guys can buy into. Both of you SHUT THE HELL UP AND LET'S GO!" Trepid shouted at the duo. Both stopped with their banter and stared with disdain at him over the crass suggestion.

Junior turned to the controls of the helicopter and flipped a few switches. "Fine, but no promises after we arrive."

"Just...get me back to base...please…" Trepid said while rubbing his fingers up and down the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off a migraine.

Junior glanced behind his seat where he saw a perturbed Bonnie slouched into her seat, arms crossed with her trademark scowl focused on him. He returned a sharp glare of his own before grabbing the helicopter's cyclic and lifting it into the air. As the helicopter rose in elevation, the scowl on Bonnie's face began to give way to one which was more concerning.

Hundreds of miles away a different sort of activity was taking place inside a secret, underground facility where Will Du and Akuma piloted their hovercraft onto a small landing pad located at the end of a long vertical tunnel which was built into the side of a mountain. Upon coming to rest on the polished concrete floor, the craft was quickly met by a group of former Drakken's henchmen, still wearing their red cowled uniforms, and Maddox, his former chief of research who had been responsible for the Synthodrone androids many years prior.

"Come on! Get away, get away you fools!" Maddox shouted at the henchmen, waving them off to disperse so his superior could exit the vehicle unabated.

"How was the 'errand'?" Maddox asked while helping Du exit the craft.

"It was...complicated," he replied while rubbing an abrasion on his face he received from his fight with Ron. "However, we got what we needed and that's all that matters."

"Excellent!"

Akuma next exited the hovercraft, tucked tightly under his arm was the round, yellow protective case which contained the mirrors.

"Take it easy with those Akuma! Those things are fragile!" Maddox scolded.

Akuma growled back at the scientist looking him square into his rose-colored glasses, objecting to the criticism.

"Now, now, Akuma, let's not get carried away," Du said calmly. "How about you take those mirrors down to the assembly site and make sure they don't do anything to damage them."

"Fine," Akuma nodded in compliance "I think I can handle carrying them 50 yards after they managed to survive a collapsed building and a hovercraft flight," he jabbed at Maddox before heading out of the area with the henchmen in tow.

Once Akuma had left, Du and Maddox began walking out of the landing bay in the opposite direction.

"What is the status on the drill?" Du inquired while putting his hands behind his back.

"Ahead of schedule, with the mirrors in our possession we should have full assembly by the end of the week."

"Excellent."

"So, speaking of which, you never really explained to...well, _any of us_ what exactly you're going to do with it once it's completed."

"That's because it's none of your concern."

"I'm sorry, of course...it's just some of the guys were curious and…"

"I pay you all to do a job, not ask questions to _why_ you are doing the job," Du injected.  
"Be grateful I gave you a place to work instead of leaving you panhandling outside the Guild of Calamitous Intent like I found you."

"Yes sir, forgive me for bringing it up."

"Just, get it built and operational," he continued as the duo walked down a long corridor. "That's all you need to worry about."

"And speaking of things functioning properly, how is our guest doing?"

"We are making progress, her levels are elevated but she's still not at the point for the desired reaction to take hold."

"Yet," Du added.

"We're getting there. We've run her through several stress tests ranging from waterboarding to low pressure chambers and she still hasn't cracked, despite it being _days_ since we started the process."

"How about we go have a chat with her, I may have some news which might help that process along."

"As you wish," Maddox said while cleaning off his magenta-hued glasses. "We currently have her down in the Sector 4 tank soaking in an experimental chemical bath that we've hypothesized will speed up her molecular structure faster and more efficiently than the shock treatment we had originally tried on her."

After a few short minutes, the duo had reached Sector 4 and were greeted by a large blast door flanked by a pair of henchmen guards.

They walked past, swiped a key card through a station and entered the room which contained the large glass tank Maddox had alluded to earlier.

"This tank used to house Drakken's pet killer octopus until it mysteriously died, I'm glad we were able to find a new use for it."

"That's nice," Du replied with an obvious lack of caring. "Bring her up."

Maddox pressed a few buttons on a nearby control panel which triggered a submerged

platform to rise up from out of the tank. On top of the platform the outline of a female figure began to show as the bright yellow liquid drained off. After the solution had escaped the platform, it was then moved away from the tank, tilted vertically and then finally set on the floor in front of the two observers. The female figure began to cough violently, as she tried to clear the chemical liquid from her lungs. After several seconds, the coughing had subsided and normal breathing had begun. Once she had gained her composure, the woman lifted her head, her long damp black hair stuck to her face, covering it from view before she shook slightly, exposing a bright green eye which gazed with raw intensity at her captors."

"Enjoying your accommodations, Shego?" Du asked tongue-in-cheek.

"Screw...you…asshole" she responded defiantly, her voice still raspy from the chemical bath.

"Still feisty I see."

"Let me out of these bonds and I'll _show you_ feisty."

"I uh, need to check her vitals and get some samples," Maddox injected as he approached his former coworker with a hand held scanner and began to scan various parts of her body.

"Let's see, heart rate is elevated, that's good. Body temperature is continuing to rise, excellent…"

"Get that thing away from me you backstabbing bastard!" she growled. "I can't believe you're actually working for this prick."

"Yeah well, I _am_ a villain Shego," Maddox defended. "It's what I do, and besides, we had a good thing until you and Drakken decided to go all Goody Two Shoes on us and laid us all off. Villains have to eat too you know."

"Yeah, but still... _him?_ So much for old loyalty."

"What can I say, he provides dental," he said smiling an obvious artificially whitened smile.

"Good thing since you're going to need it whenever I get free from this." she said igniting her hands into raging green flames and tried to burn through her straps without success.

Du raised a slight eyebrow at the gesture, unimpressed.

"Oh right...high grade fireproof something or other straps right? Must've forgot on the account of all that simulated drowning you've been providing. Silly me," she sarcastically smirked before extinguishing her flames.

Maddox continued his examination, shining a light in her eyes and trying to look into her mouth. Shego had enough, and lunged sharply at the scientist, grabbing his index finger with her mouth and chomping down on it, resulting in Maddox screaming in pain while blood squirted in all directions. After a brief, frantic struggle he managed to wriggle his finger free of her mouth and fell backwards on the floor.

"YOU ALMOST BIT MY FINGER OFF YOU BITCH!" he yelled, cradling his hand while attempting to stop the bleeding.

"Too bad I didn't," she said smirking with a line of blood running down her cheek before spitting a blood-laden wad of saliva in Maddox's direction.

Through the commotion, Will Du continued to remain in a stoic position, unfazed by the chaos occurring in front of him. "Maddox, go down to the infirmary and get your finger fixed," he calmly said standing over him while he continued to squirm on the floor.

After several seconds, Maddox struggled to make it to his feet before bolting for the exit. Giving Shego a parting glance of disapproval.

Du calmly waited for Maddox to leave the room before he put his arms behind his back and slowly began to approach his captor.

"Concealing your fingers...smart," Shego commented loftily.

"Not putting your extremities within the proximity of a captive's mouth is Common Sense 101," he replied. "This is just me being, casual."

"Sure, whatever *cough*. This is how _I_ roll casual. Tied up, submerged in a tank for hours on end...good times," she said sarcastically.

"First off, my condolences to your partner."

*Cough, cough* "Blow it out your ass."

"Now that's not nice."

"Neither is killing my partner...what do you want?" Shego quipped, still having issues breathing.

Du pulled a stool away from a nearby desk and moved it in front of his captive. He then casually sat down, folded his hands and leaned within inches of her face.

"Do you know what you are Miss Gorforth?" he asked, calling her by her real name.

"Yeah, I'm the person who's going to to burn that stupid smirk off your face along with the rest of its features once I get out of this," she snarled.

"Defiant even in the face of insurmountable odds. How appropriate...how _you_."

Shego flashed a fake smile, her teeth still red with Maddox's blood.

"Tell me, do you recall that time when your old foe Avairius created a staff which was able to steal your brothers' powers?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Remember how empowered he felt when he was able to switch back and forth between abilities at will?"

She shrugged. "Wasn't that 'empowered' after I took it from his feathered ass."

"Exactly. And then you discovered that not only could you control your brothers' powers with the staff, but you could use them _all at the same time._ Something Avairius didn't know until after the staff was no longer in his possession."

"What's your point?"

"My points is, _you're_ like the staff. You think that what you emit from your hands are impressive and the limit to your powers, but what you _don't_ understand is that you're so much more than green flaming hands. So much more."

"What are you talking about?"

"Think about your brothers; superhuman strength, the ability to grow and shrink at will, to multiply-while I'm thinking about it, tell me, how awkward was it when your kid brother created that copy of himself and it never went away?"

Shego managed a weak eyeroll as Du recounted her family's life history.

"Fine, then there is you," he continued, seeing Shego wasn't going to play along. "The girl with the glowing green hands. What kind of superpower is that exactly? You don't see something like that in the comic books."

"Comic books aren't exactly 'Origin of the Species' there pal. I can't really help what powers were given to me by that stupid comet."

"True. However, I've followed your family for years, Studied the five of you throughout your hero and no-so-much hero times. And I noticed something, _different_ with you over those years."

"I'm the only girl? Egads, Holmes, you've done it again," she snarked.

"Oh, give me _some_ credit, I'm not a moron," he said standing up from the stool and walking away from her with his hands still behind his back. "It's the glowing of your hands. All of you do it, _but_ only when you are enacting your powers. When Hego is lifting a tanker truck, glowing hands, when Mego is crawling through a keyhole, glowing hands, when Mego is creating his very own basketball team, glowing hands. But you...your hands just glow. I've watched reel after reel of footage between your fights with your siblings and Global Justice and Kim Possible and all you do is basic hand-to-hand combat."

"So, after noticing this, I came to a pair of conclusions."

"Oh, do tell. Always a sucker for lousy monologues."

"The first one is that you never truly use your powers, because either you don't know how to or you are doing it wrong. Like you're driving a car with its parking brake on."

"Now, thanks to the dedicated, and quite possibly unethical, research methods my scientists performed this idea has merit. Your powers aren't emitted through your hands but through your _body_ as a whole. Your insides work like a reactor, continuously creating condensed cosmic energy which you merely release through piddly blasts that barely leave burn marks on walls. You do more damage with your claws and reckless behavior than you have ever managed to do with your powers."

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm bad enough as it is that I don't _need_ any powers."

"So you admit you don't know what you're doing?"

"Hey, I came to the realization a long time ago that I was the 'Jubilee' of Team Go. It didn't hold me back, I was bad enough to handle my own both during and after that time of my life."

"Yes, you and Drakken were a regular Bonnie and Clyde," he scoffed. "Which brings me to the second part of my theory."

"And what's that?" she sneered.

"That being, frankly _you're not evil. Never were, are or will be."_

"Ha! That's rich" Shego laughed before hacking on some more fluid. "Wait'll I get out of these straps. I"ll _show_ you evil!"

"Oh will you?" he questioned, "I was a top ranking agent for Global Justice for over fifteen years. During that span of time I witnessed firsthand the mass graves of the Rwandan genocide, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, labor camps in North Korea and militants indiscriminately blowing up schools filled with children in Pakistan. I have _seen_ evil, and what I see in front of me isn't remotely of the sort."

"TRY ME!" she seethed, increasingly getting angrier, her hands and eyes beginning to glow.

"Don't flatter yourself dear, I know an act when I see one."

"Wanna test that theory?" she replied, her eye beginning to twitch.

"Remind me again, how many people have you killed?"

"Huh?" she said perplexed.

"It's a simple question, how many people have. You. Killed?"

Shego pursed her lips and looked down at the floor. "I-I don't kill people."

"Oh you don't? Miss I'm-going-to-burn-your-face-off doesn't have a body count?"

She answered with an awkward shrug of her shoulders.

"Okay, how about how many people have you shot?"

Shego gave no response.

"Stabbed?"

Again, no response other than a slight fading of the glow in her eyes.

"How many people have you beaten within an inch of their lives?"

The glow faded more and her eyes relaxed from the scowl.

"How many people did you hospitalize with something _other_ than a case of the common cold? I have a feeling that number is enough to count on one hand."

Her glow was almost completely gone and the anger written across her face a moment ago was morphing, changing to something different.

"And better yet, let's look at your longstanding feud with the amateur crime fighting cheerleader Kim Possible herself. How many times did you have her dead to rights? Her life hanging within your green glowing hands and you failed to end it? For someone so evil, you seem to lack the basic conviction to smite a foe at every opportunity that's presented to you. Most of which ultimately resulted in either your own humiliation or incarceration. No less at the hands of an individual who had to rely on a licensed adult to _drive_ her to the bulk of her missions."

" _That's_ not the modus operandi of an evil supervillain...that's not even the handiwork of a small time villain. No, that's what you would expect from a _fraud_. Because in the end, that's all you've ever been. A fraud who pretended to be some high-caliber villain when in reality she's a rebellious Gen-Xer with family issues. And to further play on the charade, you hooked up with the only villain more benign than you as a partner. Evil and you don't even belong in the same sentence."

The glow in her eyes had completely faded away and she slumped over in a big sigh. A smirk came across Du's face as he saw that his words were having an effect on her. He then walked over to her and began to caress the hairs on top of her head.

"Call me a liar," he stated.

"Kiss my green hued ass," she sighed in response.

"It's alright my dear, I know that we can't always end up being what we want to be. But, in your case, I'm quite certain you're the exception to the rules."

"Huh?"

"We will unleash your full potential. It will take some time but the stress tests which have been administered to you are beginning to show progress and your true powers are beginning to rise to the surface. And when we get you to where we want you to be, we'll use you to help usher in a new age of man. You will go from Jubilee to The Dark Phoenix by the time I am done with you."

There was a pause in the conversation while Shego tried to recollect herself from the verbal onslaught Du had unleashed on her.

"So, why do all this?" she finally muttered.

Du stood back up and paced away from the tank.

"Why indeed."

"Oh quit being cryptic. You killed my best friend, kidnapped me, you stuck me in a tank for hours on end, shocking the hell out of me for what seems like weeks. The least you could do is give me an explanation for the whole Clockwork Orange treatment."

"I don't owe you anything," he replied as he approached the control panel and entered in commands that began to tilt the gurney back and raise it back into the tank. "My plan isn't in motion yet on the account of _you_ not being where you need to be yet, so instead of sitting here and monologuing like a comic book villain we're putting you back in the tank to get this process moving along. Trust me though, when it's all said and done, people will remember the contributions you made to society. And its renewal."

"Y-you won't get away with this," she muttered in a shaky tone.

Du stopped the lift. "Wait, what did you say?" with a slight chuckle.

Shego's pride was eroding faster than sand in a flood, and a look of defeat beginning to show on her face while her eyes began to water.

"I said...you won't get away with this."

"Oh, that is great coming from you!" Du laughed. "The big bad villainess Shego has now been diminished to a mere damsel in distress! Lemme guess what your next line is going to be. Something about Kim Possible right?"

"Eat me," she said in defiance.

"Oh no, please. Do say it. I want to hear it come directly from the horse's mouth."

Her eyes began to tear up more, the humiliation of being in a no-win situation started to overcome her. And she uttered words to which she hoped to never say despite her face turn years ago.

"Kim Possible...you know that with me missing and what you did to Drew. You know she's on the case. Somehow...and she'll stop you."

"Yes!" Du mockingly clapped again in schadenfreude enjoyment. "I so hoped that you would lower yourself to saying that. And know what? You're right, that amateur and her boyfriend _were_ sent to find you and to disrupt my plans. They even have Global Justice backing their efforts."

Shego's face flashed a slight glimmer of hope.

"In fact, I actually met the two of them, along with their *cough* replacement a few hours ago."

Her face then blanked as she noticed the lack of concern her captor had on his face at the acknowledgement.

"You know, her coming out of retirement was such a big deal, I bet you they're still talking about it on the news. How about, before we stick you back in the tank, we pop in and see what the media's talking about, shall we?"

Upon saying that, Du pushed a few more buttons on the control panel, which activated a large monitor on the adjacent wall.

"Let's see." He smirked while flipping through channels. "Soap Opera, weather, drama, drama, Flippies, The Ocho, ah! Here we go! I love it when you time a channel change just right so that the story comes one right as you turn to it."

" _...so far we can confirm no casualties at the Middleton Space Center, although officials are saying that the facility is a total loss. As for the rumors that former teen crime fighter and local heroine Kim Possible was involved in the incident at the Space Center..."_

"Shego pulled her head up from the gurney and glanced down towards the monitor."

" _...we can_ _confirm_ _that she was inside the facility when the control tower collapsed and was transported to the Middleton Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries. We have not been told what those injuries are but we have heard reports that she was being treated for a possible gunshot wound and a broken leg. We'll have more information wh-"_

"They have it wrong, she doesn't have a broken leg," Du said muting the broadcast and pacing back towards Shego with a grin. "It's more like severe head trauma. Real nasty, 'head went right through a control panel. And those old composites aren't exactly weak."

"Oh, plus she was shot by one of her own people," he said while pacing around the tank nonchalantly. "Either way, I wouldn't be looking for that spry redhead to come barging in here anytime soon, even if she knew where to look for us in our underground facility, she wouldn't be able to stand on her own two feet much less fight off an entire squadron of henchmen. So, as you can see, nobody is coming for you. So we should get you back to getting those powers realised."

Shego flopped back on the gurney, defeated and upset at the news of pure hopelessness which she had just witnessed.

"Screw you, Du," she defiantly whimpered before she disappeared beneath the surface of the tank and the lid was secured.

Du then proceeded to initiate the stress inducing sequence on the control panels and watched contently as various flashes of light emitted from the tank's opaque walls. Once the sequence was back in operation, he left the room and headed towards the infirmary.

Maddox was getting the eighth suture sewn into his finger by the time his superior entered the medical bay.

"How's the finger?"

"She broke the skin, but I'll live."

"So that means you can get back to your work immediately, yes?"

The scientist nodded.

"Good. In that case, when you are finished reattaching your finger I want you to get back to Sector 4 and increase the intensity of the stress tests _four_ fold."

"I'm sorry but what?" Maddox replied surprised.

"Shego's willpower is starting to break down. I saw it in her eyes after giving her a little bit of news from back home."

"Okay but, _four_ fold?" That's a lot of voltage running through her body! Factor in the chemical bath and..."

"And the desired critical mass will have been achieved ahead of schedule," Du interrupted. "She's on the cusp of total break down, we just need to give her a nudge over the finish line."

Maddox acted unsure of his boss' proposal but he reluctantly agreed to it. "Consider it done."

"Good, and while you're at it, contact Engineering and tell them that they need to begin working around the clock on assembling the Deep Venture. We're moving up the timeline and I want both Shego and that drill operational at the earliest possible time!"

"I will inform them as soon as the stress test is increased."

"Good," Du said contently. "Now if you'll excuse me I have a manifesto to draft."

Back inside the hospital, Tara had stepped into the break room to grab a breakfast burrito from the famed "wheel of death" vending machine. Once she purchased one, she unwrapped it and put it into the microwave, and was somewhat entranced while she watched the pasty white cylinder slowly turn in circles with "cheese" beginning to bubble out of it. As she watched, she caught the movement of a large object lumbering down the hallway, struggling to hold onto the railing which ran down the length of it.

She turned more to see what it was and noticed it was Ron, his face was a slight shade of blue and he was gasping for breath.

"Oh my god!" she shouted while running over to her friend, "What happened?"

"Bonnie, *gasp* balls…*gasp* can't...find...one*gasp* The pain…" Ron left off with a whimper.

"Oh, you poor thing, let me get you back to Kim's room so you can sit down." Tara draped his arm over her shoulder and helped him limp down the hall.

They reached Kim's room and quietly made their way over to the chair Ron had been sitting in earlier. As he sat he slouched over so low that his shoulders were touching his thighs.

"Hang tight for a sec, I'll be right back," Tara said while quickly exiting the room, only to return a few minutes later with an ice bag and kneeled next to her friend.

"Here, this should help."

Ron forced himself to slowly sit up. *Ugh* "Thanks...Tara…" he said sticking the bag between his legs and then proceeding to put his hand down his pants. "I can't...find..one of *gasp* my boys."

Tara awkwardly drew her bottom lip between her teeth, "Yeah, I'm not helping you there, Ron. When it comes to friends, I draw the line at handing out ice packs until I get my LPN license."

"No need *AWW* found it…" he said in obvious pain before pulling his hand out and readjusting the ice pack.

"So, do I _want_ to know why Bonnie kicked you in the pills?"

" _Apparently_ ," he started, adjusting himself higher into the chair. "I'm just an amateur who would be in their way as we regrouped and planned our next move. So, to ensure I didn't hop on the helicopter ride back to headquarters, *ugh* Bonnie roshamboed me and then sent me back down in the elevator. Said I was needed more back here at KP's bedside than actually doing something productive."

"Wow, that's a real bitch move. Even for Bonnie," Tara replied.

"Tell me about it. It's not like I wasn't doing her job years before she decided to do it or anything."

"This is true."

"Her and that Trepid guy *ugh* couple of arrogant jerks," he seethed painfully.

"Um, do you want me to go grab a nurse or PA to check you out?" she asked. "If she's now a trained spy she could have really injured you."

"No, Tara, that...won't be...necessary." He sighed and adjusted the ice bag. "This too shall *ugh* pass."

"Alright, then," the blonde said standing back up. "I'm going to go grab my burrito and head back to my station. If you need anything just give a yell or hit that little red button on the side of Kim's bed. If there isn't anything else I'll come back in about an hour and check on you two. I'll even bring another ice pack." She winked while closing the door behind her.

Ron replied with a grimaced look on his face and a thumb up in acknowledgment before slouching back down into his seat, still filled with various levels of pain coursing through his body.

Several minutes of trying to subdue the pain and swelling, Ron began to feel a little better and reached for the television remote which was located on Kim's bed.

"Let's see what they're saying about us, KP," he mumbled to his unconscious partner while turning the television on to the local news channel which was currently broadcasting a news conference being conducted by the Middleton Fire Chief."

" _...as we said at the onset of this news conference, there appears to have been no loss of life at the at the site of the Middleton Space Center...according to the program director, the facility was experiencing some sort of malfunction which had forced a full evacuation of the site earlier. However, the cause of the explosions and collapse of the control tower are still being investigated."_

"So they're still towing that angle huh?"

" _...Our crews have just begun to inspect the remains of the collapsed control tower, but we don't anticipate finding anything to lead us to the contrary. We'll let you know of any updates at 5 pm later today, thank you."_

"Pfft, your crews didn't happen to come across an engagement ring by chance did you?" Ron mumbled at the tv.

" _Continuing with our main story, whatever occurred at the Middleton Space Center early this morning which left the entire facility in ruins, also may have contributed to the hospitalization of local hero and former teen sensation Kim Possible who is rumored to have been admitted to the Middleton Medical Center arou-"_

"Not a rumor. Let's see what else is on." Ron continued flipping through the channels.

"Fishing, no. Infomercial, no. Telenovela, no. Goof Troop, nope. It's too early for anything good, I guess."

"Ron?" a weak and crackly voice spoke from the bed next to him.

Ron's eyes widened and he quickly turned to where he was met with the bloodshot, emerald colored eyes of Kim staring back at him.

"W-what's the 'sitch?" she asked while trying to sit up before quickly slouching back in  
pain.

Ron stared dumbfounded at the fact that his girlfriend had regained consciousness, and after a few seconds of silence, he swung his head back towards the door.

"TARA!"

END -


End file.
